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85FA ; 
_ +Brigham Young Univ 
Serials Section 
6385 Lee Library 
Provo, UT 84622 









CHEESE AND CRACKERS 


When I was growing up and had to give two-and- 
a-half minute talks, I sometimes resorted to 
Padding my own brief ideas with stories or poems 
from one of those compact little books called 
something like Golden Nuggets of Thought or 
Thoughts for Talks, Their tables of contents 
promised anecdotes for everything from anger 

to zeal. The books themselves were small enough 
that in my youthful naivete I thought that I 
could mask one with a few loose papers so that 
the congregation wouldn't necessarily have to 
know that most of the talk came prefabricated 
from one quick source--just add tears. 





And I did shed many a sincere tear over those 
tender stories that were geared to strum the 
heartstrings. But as the years pass and I hear 
these stories time and again--usually from teen- 
agers who distrust the notion that the best exper- 
dence is one's own--familiarity breeds contempt. 

I squirm in my foreknowledge of what happened 
to the second pair of footsteps in the sand, 
or I wish that the violin strings were missing 
in "The Touch of the Master's Hand." 


I have to admit, however, that there is one 
story that continues to haunt me. A woman alleg- 
edly scrimps and saves for years and is finally 
able to go on a cruise. She calculates that 
if she limits herself to cheese and crackers 
in her cabin on the ship she will even have 
enough money to pay for one meal in the main 
dining room. After indulging in this dinner 
on the last night of the cruise, she inquires 
of the steward where she should pay the bill. 
Somewhat confused, he replies, "But, madam, the 
price of the meals is included in your ticket." 
The woman has focused so hard on scrimping and 
Saving that she is unaware that she had the right 
to so much more, 


At sixteen or seventeen, I trembled to think 
that I, too, was leading a cheese-and-crackers 
existence. Even now, I take stock to see if 
I have my nose stuck in Life on $5 a Day while 
the more knowledgeable are reading Feodor's Guide 
to Luxury. 


I have reason for my suspicions; I recognized 
the symptoms early, I recall a steak fry up 
Provo Canyon to celebrate high school graduation, 
I brought a tuna fish sandwich. Actually, many 
people thought that I showed foresight because 
no one brought charcoal fluid, but I knew that 
premonition wasn't my real motivation. I could 
well afford the steak, but a steak seemed rather 
ostentacious when a sandwich would do. 


And the scrimp-and-save mentality has con- 
tinued, Even with a good teaching job and money 
in the bank, I still live in ‘the bargain base- 
ment. When shopping for clothes, I find myself 
muttering, "Hal I could make that for less than 
half." Then, with my adrenalin high, I spend 
two hours in the fabric store, three hours schen- 
ing how to lay and cut out the pattern (I always 
buy less fabric than what is called for--everybody 
knows that the pattern companies are in cahoots 
with the fabric mills), and two nights sewing 
the dress, One of my non-sewing friends once 
pointed out to me that if I had to pay myself 


TEXAS RETREAT 


As darkness fell on April 19, 1985, cars full 
of LDS women were converging on Hidaway Lake 
in Tyler, Texas, We wended our way through the 
winding streets to find Trish Dahl's house, 
There, it was rumoured, Molly Bennion had planned 
a retreat for Exponent II readers in the South. 
Some of us thought that the best way to find 
Trish's elusive house might be to drive around 
with our windows open, singing loudly "Freedom's 
Daughters," We would then stop at the house 
where we heard the applause. 


Most of the twenty sisters who gathered were 
from the Houston-Dallas area, but some were from 
as far west as Santa Fe and Flagstaff. Others 
had driven from Baton Rouge and New Orleans. 
Although a wide spectrum of ages, professions, 
political, and religious views were present, 

a tight bond of sisterhood quickly formed, 


The food was superb. Trish Dahl is literally 

@ professional when it comes to food. She had 
preplanned tasty, nutritious, easy-to-prepare 
meals, Everyone pitched in to cook and clean. 
The accommodations were also excellent. Some 
stayed at Trish's house, and the rest were put 
up in apartments owned by the resort. Various 
sisters brought big pillows and folding chairs 
so that we'd all fit into Trish's living room 
for discussions, 


Friday night we introduced ourselves and ex- 
Plained why we were there. This sharing session 
lasted far into the night. Then there was one 
bit of excitement when 15-month-old Joseph managed 
to lock himself and the only key into his room, 


2 EXPONENT I 





for the time that I spend sewing, the dress would 
probably cost less if I bought it. I pushed 

back what hair I had left, squinted at her through 
bloodshot eyes, and told her that my sewing was 
purely recreational, an artistic outlet, 


Ultimate revenge came later. I taught her 
how to comparison shop. Now she knows that "shop= 
ping" and "patronizing one store" are mutually 
exclusive. Gone are the days when she could 
flip through a mail order catalog or pile skirts 
and sweaters on the counter at Bon Marche without 
even looking at the price tags, 


And I have spread the disease further, My 
husband not only comparison shops, he clips cou- 
pons. I have gotten used to brands that my mother 
never bought, trial-size packages, super giant- 
sized packages, and multiple Packages--with only 
four proof-of-purchase seals from Rice Crispies, 
you get a coupon for a fifth box free! (My nieces 
ate the last box this summer. After I wiped 
the dust off the top, I noted the "best-if-eaten- 
by" date was December 1983.) 


I suppose that I wouldn't feel that this frame 
of mind was so insidious if it ended with shop- 
ping. I could label it "being frugal" or 
"shopping smart" and pat myself on the back for 
getting the best of a bargain, but my scrimp-and- 
Save mania even pervades vacations, 


Bob and I camp, not because we particularly 
enjoy it but because it's cheaper, The Eskimos 
have many words for snow; I have many words for 
rain, I vividly remember one thunderstorm along 
the St. Lawrence River. We had passed several 
motels en route, but I held out. After all, 
we had camped in inclement weather before, 
sides, I had gathered up a load of discarded 
boards off the street in Quebec--free firewood! 
As it turned out, the rain wasn't so bad; the 
problem was the howling, forty-mile-per-hour 
winds, Our extra underwear saved us. We wrapped 
it over our ears, scrunched down in our sleeping 
bags, and were thankful that we had only a tiny 
two-man tent that wasn't likely to blow over. 


Be- 


Last summer, I became bent on proving that 
I was not a "cheese-and-crackers" person, that 
I could indulge in life. I signed us up for 
a trip to Greece, including a three-day cruise. 
Admittedly I chose the cheapest tour available, 
but I figured that a tour was a step in the right 
direction, At least I wouldn't miss half the 
countryside trying to figure out how to by-pass 
toll roads, and I could avoid the shoulderbag 
droop that comes from carrying extra rations 
because I knew that most meals were furnished. 
The basics were taken care of; it was the shopping 
that did us in, 


Greece is one of those countries where one 
is expected to haggle. Now for the uninitiated, 
haggling might seem a comparison shopper's dream, 
It's a nightmare, Who knows how much less the 
little shop down the street might charge? Will 
I get a better deal if I pay in dollars, drachmas, 
or use Mastercard? Would I get a better price 
in Corinth or in Delphi? What does the tour 
book advise? How much time before the bus leaves? 


with Mom and Grandma on the wrong side of the 
door. When the housebreaking skills of numerous 
sisters proved ineffective, he was finally re- 
leased by the police. 


Saturday morning, Molly read Margaret 
Toscano's paper from a recent Sunstone Theologi- 
cal Symposium. Her thesis was that women had 
literally received the priesthood in the early 
Church but had not been ordained to specific 
offices, Toscano stated that Joseph Smith had 
included women in the Quorum of the Annointed, 
an administrative body. The discussion ranged 
widely on priesthood issues. Some sisters were 
satisfied by the status quo, while others wanted 
to hold and to use the spiritual power of the 
priesthood in blessing and serving others. 
Toscano's conclusion, which advocated patience, 
touched many, Although she firmly believes that 
women should eventually be brought into the lead- 
ing councils of the Church, she is not clamoring 
for immediate action. Instead, she is waiting 
with charity for God to act. 


We also discussed how to deal with the petty 
and annoying problems in life--while keeping 
an eternal perspective. Some solutions, such 
as having a close relationship with the Savior, 
serving others, and keeping a positive mental 
attitude might seem simple, but when they were 
suggested by mature sisters, they appeared to 
be solutions that had been tried and tested. 


Reading and pondering were mentioned several 
times as suggested ways to overcome despair. 
Many women preferred original sources in Church 





Then I received the sign. I haven't quite 
figured out the interpretation yet; I just know 
that it is significant. It came on our last 
night aboard the cruise ship. We had usually 
dined on deck at the smorgasbord, That night, 
though, everyone was expected to attend the cap- 
tain's formal farewell dinner. Late that after- 
noon, however, it became evident that many guests 
would opt to forego the festivities because of 
the increasingly rough seas. Bob and I lay on 
our bunks for about an hour before we decided 
not to attend. We didn't feel sick, but neither 
were we willing to risk feeling really awful 
later by going to the dinner. I was lying there 
trying to reconstruct the rescue scene from The 
Poseidon Adventure when I heard a knock at the 
door, I'm sure that the staff thought that they 
were doing us a kindness by sending a steward 
around with snacks for those of us not at dinner, 
but what he proffered drew me up short--cheese 
and crackers, 



































At this point, I get muddled trying to ascer- 
tain the exact significance of this incident. 
Does it indicate that I will always be cursed 
with this pinch-penny mentality? Or isita 
curse? Maybe the incident emphasizes the fact 
that a cheese-and-crackers existence is a firm 
foundation that will provide strength in times 
of stress, Maybe I have cut through the excesses 
of life to find a Truth. 
















In my more lucid moments, I realize that I 
have shied away from the more obvious interpre- 
tation of the original story, Frugality is 
irrelevent; ignorance is the focus. The story 
of the woman saving for the cruise is unsettling 
because the woman does not realize that she is 
entitled to more. Her scrimping to pay for the 
trip is laudatory; her ignorance of her rights 
is painful. This story haunts me because this 
woman is a victim of ignorance. She gets less 
than what was already paid for. Now if anything 
could upset a scrimp-and-saver like me, that's 
it. And no matter how much sympathy I want to 
give to that woman, I cannot forgive her for 
not knowing. Why didn't she read the brochures 
more carefully? Why didn't she ask? 



















It's even worse when I try to deal with the 
spiritual interpretation. How much enlightenment 
and how many spiritual blessings have I missed 
because of my own ignorance? The admonitions 
are there: "Ask, and ye shall receive; knock, 
and it shall be opened unto you." We have been 
promised ", , , line upon line, precept upon 
precept," based on our readiness and our asking. 


















I can only judge my spiritual awareness by 
noticing how many blessings come as complete 
surprises, The prime example is when the priest- 
hood was given to the blacks. Even though I 
counted a black woman among my best friends, 

I am ashamed to think how little asking of the 
Lord I did. 
















The price for salvation has already been paid, 
It's the price of ignorance that appalls me. 
I may be dining on cheese and crackers while 
others are eating steak. 










Cheryl Davis Howard 
Medford, Massachusetts 





history left to us from the Arrington era, Others 
read the entire spectrum of LDS publications 


from the Wew Era to Sunstone. 


A third session dealt with doubting. Richard 
Poll's Iron Rod/Liahona sermon was mentioned 
as one of the first publicized statements that 
the Church had room for (and needed) devout doubt- 
ers, According to Poll, asking questions is 
okay. His article helped me to stay in the Church 
when I felt surrounded on all sides by inflexible 
"Iron Rods." I have felt much more at home in 
the Church since I realized that I wasn't alone. 
Other sisters expressed similar opinions by saying 
that it was easier to be "liberal" in the Church 
today. We decided that study, pondering, and 
prayer help to resolve some specific doubts but, 
for a "Liahona," all doubts never disappear. 


The visual and olfactory highlight of the 
trip occurred on Saturday afternoon when we visit- 
ed the Tyler Rose Gardens, The gardens are in 
a natural amphitheater through which we wandered 
in small groups, 


Sunday morning was devoted to a Quaker Meet- 
ing where we shared our thoughts and feelings. 
Throughout the weekend, spontaneous discussions 
occurred over a variety of subjects ranging from 
suicide to sexual practices, 


As we shared our problems, doubts, and joys, 
a bond of sisterhood was forged, and love for the 
gospel and for each other radiated in the house 
like a steady light. A tradition has been creat- ~ 
ed. There will be another Retreat in 1986. 


Suzanne R, Hawes 
New Orleans, Louisiana 


ON EVEN GROUND 


Visiting relatives necessitated a juggling 
of sleeping accommodations. Jim and I found 
ourselves sleeping on a queen-size mattress on 
the floor. It was delightful to be able to sleep 
face to face on even ground, There was no sag 
in the mattress, Weight was not a factor. Nor- 
mally, I find myself sleeping downhill if I face 
toward Jim, which is only comfortable if he turns 
over and I can cuddle up to his back or if I 
turn over and sleep uphill and he cuddles up 
to my back. Over the years we have become very 
accustomed to the "cuddle-back" position, and 
we both enjoy being either "cuddlee" or "cuddler." 


We seem to sense, however, that the real es- 
sence of our eternal marriage is a relationship 
that is face to face on even ground, Eternally 
there is no sag, and weight is not a factor, 
but there are numerous occasions during this 
earth life when we find ourselves in the "ouddle- 
back" relationship. Neither one of us is threat- 
ened by the position of supporting role; in fact, 
we assume the role of cuddler quite aggressively, 
supporting the uphill cuddlee. 


There are a lot of uphill and downhill rela- 
tionships that are the result of weight--physical, 
social, political weight. Weight is a function 


A 


of gravity, which is a function of the temporal, 
mortal (telestial) atmosphere of our earth. Weight 
is a part of "opposition in all things," making 
our uphill/downhill relationships a part of "op=- 
position in all things." 


Even ground is part of another sphere, another 
life (before and after this one). We all are 
on even ground or equal before our Heavenly 
Father, Weight is mitigated by the Atonement. 
We all have need of the Savior's sacrifice: 
We are all dependent on Him, and we all find 
life in Him. God already knows--we already 
know--how we deal with even-ground relationships. 
The more influence the Holy Ghost has in our 
interpersonal relationships, the greater sense 
we have of even ground. 


Face to face on even ground is the true nature 
of our spiritual relationships with each other. 
Just as the spiritual nature of the Holy Ghost 
allows Him to be in more than one place/position 
at a time, so does an understanding of this truth 
free us to delight in the cuddle-back relation- 
ship--as cuddlee or as cuddler. 


Chris Elison 
Blackfoot, Idaho 


GOODBYE AND THANKS 


Linda Powell is stepping down from her respon- 
sibilities as Financial Manager of Exponent II. 
She assumed the position five years ago when 
we were on the brink of financial insolubility. 
With her leadership and technical expertise, 
Linda stabilized our finances by creating a real- 
istic budget based on an analysis of our credits 
and debits and a forecast of our future income 
and outgo, She has encouraged us to initiate 
a marketing program to give us a larger financial 
base and a fund-raising program to allow us to 
purchase word processing equipment to upgrade 
our production system. She has instituted a 
bookkeeping system and a financial committee 
to insure future accountability. 


Linda is a dedicated worker. She has brought 
professionalism and expertise to an organization 
that was strong in commitment and devotion but 
weak in fiscal policy. Our long-term survival 
is enhanced by her efforts. We appreciate the 
strength, dedication, and friendship that Linda 
has brought to us and wish her happiness and 
success in her future endeavors, 


Roslyn Udall 
Belmont, Massachusetts 


Se OOo" 0w¢0OO  C__ S«_—OSO swe 


MY “WHITED SEPULCHRE” 


Somewhere between the dust-free perfection 
of Daryl V. Hoole's Do and Date Diary style of 
living and being shut down by the public health 
officials, I steer a random course through my 
eustodial duties as a wife and mother in Zion, 
I haven't always lived this way. But then, I 
haven't always had children, After ten years 
of motherhood, my fondest memories of single 
life are not glamour and stimulus of career and 
paycheck, but rather the quiet, order, and pri- 
vacy: clothes folded neatly in drawers, books 
shelved according to my own involved plan, a 
museum-like quality to the apartment. Neither 
stacks and piles of clutter nor the several parts 
of dismantled matchbox cars have ever been my 
idea of a harmonious environment. 


in those single days, I was confident that 
I could maintain the museum-like quality with 
three or four hours of housework a week, It 
was simply a matter of discipline and organiza- 
tion. Cooking and cleaning have never been crea- 
tive outlets for me, but neither do I hate doing 
them. I don't mind getting my house in order; 
I just can't get it to stay that way. 


Even after we had four children, I was still 
shocked by the discovery that all the darling, 
clever people whom I now lived with also created 
messes and scutwork on a level heretofore unima- 
gined. Most days, I feel like some heavy equip- 
ment operator in West Berlin, still shoveling 
away from World War II. A few hours cleaning 
a week isn't sufficient any more. So I've devel- 
oped my own "Whited Sepulchre" approach to house- 
work and life with children: maximum order at- 
tainable with minimum energy expended. 


I keep the kitchen counters cleared, swab 
out the bathrooms every morning, make the beds 
that can be seen from the front hall, close all 
cupboards, drawers, and doors, and never allow 
the children in the front room after family prayer 
at 8:00 A.M. When they have left, I run the 
vacuum over the crumbs and bits and call it good. 
Deep clean sounds like an obscene movie to me. 
I do as much housework as I can stand and some 
extra now and then for character development, 
I haven't decided whether I really do hate house- 
work or am just lazy. But after finishing the 
day's minimums, I prefer a tour of the Botanic 
Gardens or the Museum of Natural History with 
Jonathan, aged three, or slowly reading and under- 
lining The Rise of American Civilization. 


The only cleaning job that I'm fanatic about 
is keeping the bacteria count down around the 
toilets, The little boys can deposit solid wastes 
where it belongs, but since they have begun stand- 
ing to urinate, we have had two choices for house- 
hold scent: urine or Pinesol. 


My husband upbraids me for my cavalier treat- 
ment of windows, His mother is devoted to her 
windows. So are our neighbors. I can wave to 
any one of them on my way out during any week 
in the year as they do the insides and the out- 
sides. For me, the primary duty of any self- 
respecting window cover is to hide the dirt, 

If the covering also happens to be part of an 
aesthetically pleasing decorating scheme, then 
the gods have been kind. Children, pets, and 
aesthetics are not a workable combination at 
our house, Our windows have been washed twice 
in the six years since we moved in. I remember 


doing every single one six weeks before Jonathan 
was born, hoping that such unusual activity would 
bring on delivery. (After the seventh month, 

I always feel I have done my gestational duty. 
Doing the windows didn't bring on labor, of 
course.) Two years after, I hired a girl to 

do them all again. She was earning the money 

for a ticket to Hollywood and a show business 
career. And because she had knocked and specifi- 
cally asked to do the windows .. . 


I serub the kitchen floor every other week, 
Grape juice is always and only spilled on a fresh- 
ly waxed floor. I tried substituting orange 
slices on mopping days. They don't stain but 
do leave sticky bits all over the legs of the 
table and down the front of the refrigerator. 
Wiping up grape juice is easier, and the stain 
blends well with the tracked-in mud, dribbled 
butter, and small gobs of clay that live there 
in harmony between scrubbings. 


While I can ignore, step over, or hide most 
of the messes that the children make, I have 
yet to discover a solution to mealtime chaos, 
I once gave a Mother Education lesson in Relief 
Society on mealtime manners, For comic relief, 
the good sisters who write the manuals have yet 
to come up to its equal, however unintentional 
its humor may have been, The best part was the 
line, "Flurry is the enemy of gracious dining." 
Every mother knows perfectly well that the enemy 
of gracious dining is children. We don't need 
a centerpiece for our table; we need a lackey 
willing to supervise the revolting ordeal of 
sitting with small children so that my husband 
and I can dine alone. The lesson contained the 
classic line that children learn from our exam- 
ple. Nonsense, I have never tried to balance 
a full glass of milk on my fork, squeezed a hard- 


* boiled egg through my fingers, or tucked broccoli 


under the rim of my plate, And neither has my 
husband. Nor has he once greeted me at the table 
with, "Yuk!" "Gross!" or "I'm not eating any 

of that stuffi" 


I used to feel uneasy about my "Whited Sepul- 
chre" method until my brother explained to me 
a pertinent law of thermodynamics: entropy. 
Entropy is the degree of disorder in a given 
system, While disorder always increases in a 
closed system, said Dean, energy diminishes. 
Our family room is the basic closed system, 
After I have brow-beaten any two children into 
picking up the hundreds of pieces of two complete 
sets of Leggo 400 or given up and done it myself, 
the natural law of entropy dictates that those 
same pieces will again be scattered all over 
the room by those same or two other children, 
And, energy depleted, I will be too pooped to 
pick them all up again, Randomness, clutter, 
and disorder are natural states requiring energy 
before order can be restored, But, after the 
morning minimums, I'm out of energy--also a natu- 
ral state for me, 


Because I was never very good at science, 
I am as bored with the natural laws as I am with 
the mess, And therefore, while neither wildly 
fulfilling nor particularly efficient, the random 
approach to housework has become, for me, a com- 
promise method for surviving the natural state 
of the house with any degree of sanity. 


Sharon Pedersen 
Ballwin, Missouri 


AMBER BEADS 


I remember attending school in a one-room 
building. We had double-seated desks, and Mabel 
Martineau was my seat-mate., During the summer, 
we roamed fields, waded through ditches, rode 
horses, and drove cows. We ate alfalfa stocks 
and milkweed rose-seed pods all summer, We played 
games like "No Bears Around," and "Prisoner's 
Base." Sarah Wanda Rees sat near me, She had 
big braids of blond hair that were always combed 
nicely. She kept her notebooks so much neater 
than mine. 


On the first day of school, I wore a dress 
that hung from a full yoke, black stockings, 
and black shoes, I wore my hair in braids. 
As I walked along the back of the school room, 
I saw Miss Cassidy sitting at the front, a watch 
ehain hung from her neck--the watch pinned to 
her bosom, She was very neat and prim, I remem- 
ber wondering about her full bust and about how 
fat she was. I had never noticed how differently 
shaped men and women were, 


I really enjoyed school lunches, We didn't 
have waxed paper or paper napkins, only newspaper 
(a semi-weekly news). We had little lard buckets 
for our lunch pails. Mine was often filled with 
a pork sandwich, a cookie, a scone, and an apple. 


I remember when I got my first slate. Mother 
bought a double slate that she cut in two. She 
gave me one half and a slate pencil. How I loved 
that slate. I loved to sit at the table with 
the older ones in the evening. I felt so 
rich--a new slate and a new book, 


Then the spelling bee started. Any child 
could have learned to spell if they had a mother 
like mine. She called me to her knee each evening 
and gave me rows of spelling. At the end of 
the week, the words that I couldn't spell were 
given to me over and over, until I learned them 
all. When I became the spelling champ, Miss 
Cassidy put a strand of large amber beads around 
my neck, They were real amber, and mother said 
that she could see them up the road shining in 
the sunlight as I came from school, On spelling 
night, she would watch to see if I still had 
them on when I came home, I wore them all win- 
ter. I wished that Miss Cassidy had let me keep 
the beads forever, but she didn't, 


The amber beads have beaconed to me all my 
life, There have been goals that I've tried 
to reach--some better even than the amber beads, 
I've felt that zealous, overpowering effort and 
interest that mother made us all feel many times 
when trying to reach my goals. But now I know 
that I could have reached the "Amber Beads" in 
all things if I had not given up or been satisfied 
with less, 


Maude Clark White 
Perry, Utah 


Editor's Note: Maude Clark White grew up in 
Benson Ward, Utah, attended the Brigham Young 
College in Cache Valley, taught grammar school 

in Perry, Utah, where she met Roy White. They 
married and settled in Perry, raised seven well- 
fed and poetified children, and were active in 
community affairs, politics, and the Church. 
Sister White died in 1964; her essay was submitted 
by Paul Dredge. 


1985 SUMMER 3 




















Having a Form of Godliness 





"Signs of the Times" is a phrase that often 
evokes tales of wars and famines and disease 
and gore to make even the strongest stomach turn 
or tales of such evil and vile behavior that 
we prepare to lock ourselves in, convinced that 
only our food storage and the second coming can 
save us from our neighbors. These connotations 
have never held much interest for me. 


I do, however, believe that there are such 
things as signs of the times, and one sign has 
particular significance to women. It is a sign 
uttered by Paul in 2 Timothy 3:5: "This know 
also, that in the last days perilous times shall 
come, For men shall be lovers of their own 
selves, covetous, boasters, proud, blasphemous 
{he lists at least a dozen more evils]... 
having a form of godliness, but denying the 
power thereof" (emphasis mine). 


What does this mean, to have "a form of godli- 
ness," but to deny "the power thereof"? There 
have been many interpretations of this statement, 
most of them lumped under the heading "sexual 
sins." But what about a literal interpretation? 
In light of Church doctrine about our origins 
as literal descendants of God and our eventual 
destiny as gods, this seems like a natural and 
logical interpretation, 


Now if we can make the assumption, with Paul, 
that one sign of the latter days is that people 
will deny their own godliness and its power and 
that this is to be avoided, what does that mean 
for us as we enter into full adulthood in these 
latter days? Doesn't it mean that we all, as 
women, need to learn all we can about our godli- 
ness and begin to recognize and exercise the 
power associated with that godliness? 


That idea seemed so natural and so full of 
hope and joy for me some time ago that I began 
my own personal search for role models to teach 
me about my godliness and my potential for some- 


day becoming a goddess, After all, how can one 
begin to exercise the power of godliness without 
first becoming aware of what being "godly" is? 
Straightaway I ran into problems, First of all 

I began with the assumption that since I was 

a child of God, a daughter of God, then the best 
place to begin finding out about the godliness 
within me was from my Heavenly Parents because 

I inherited my godliness from my Heavenly Parents, 
as their literal offspring, as their daughter, 
Also, because I am obviously female and have 

had some experiences in mortality that are exclu- 
sively female, like periods and pregnancy and 
labor and delivery and nursing and caring so 
intensely about my role as mother, I thought 

it might be nice to know what it's like to 

be both a god and a woman-~a mother who continues 
to be a mother at the same time that she is a 

god and a woman and who can certainly from her 
vast experience shed a little light on the subject 
of being both a woman/mother and also being god- 
like. How nice it would be if mothers had a 
little bit of information. There is not one 
mother who hasn't cried deep within herself for 
that knowledge, who hasn't been in anguish be- 
cause she doesn't know enough. There is not 

one mother who has not, in some way, cried out 
for knowledge about her Heavenly Mother. What 
does it mean to be an eternal and godly woman? 
From whom shall I learn? 


Eliza R. Snow reflects this search for her 
Heavenly Mother in the words to the song "O My 
Father," 


In the heavens are parents single? 
No! The thought makes reason stare! 
Truth is reason, truth eternal 
Tells me I've a Mother there, 


I think that it is interesting that this song, 
written in 1843, is the first direct and con- 
elusive statement about the existence of a 
Heavenly Mother recorded anywhere that I could 


find in the history of the Jewish or Christian 
world, I think that it is more than just inter- 
esting; I think that it is utterly astounding! 
There is no direct reference to our Heavenly 
Mother or God who is the Mother, God the Mother, 
anywhere in all of recorded scripture, 


When I came face to face with the reality 
of it and realized what it meant to me personally, 
I was astonished that it should be so. How can 
we hope to become like someone, how can any woman 
of the whole Christian world hope to become like 
someone of whom there is no definitive, authori- 
tative confirmation of existence. As far as 
the scriptures are concerned, She does not exist. 
We have no direct statement of Her existence. 
Thank goodness for Eliza R. Snow! 


Now why should we have no record of our 
Heavenly Mother? I'm not the only one who has 
asked that question, and there is a little theory 
going around the Church that tries to answer 
that question, It goes something like this: 

"We don't know more about our Heavenly Mother 
because Heavenly Father doesn't want us to be- 
smirch Her good name like we have besmirched 
His." Now on the surface this theory sounds 
pretty nice, even loving, and I'm sure whoever 
first thought of it meant to explain the problem 
in the most loving way that he could think of. 
But it can't possibly be true. 


Why don't we know more about our Heavenly 
Mother? As I tried to answer this question for 
myself, I could think of three possible answers. 


First, because God won't let us know about 
Her, This kind of answer implies several quali- 
ties of God that need to be examined, First 
of all, why would a father deny his wife access 
to her children? What father would forbid the 
mother of his children to go to them when they 
ery out for her? Don't we need Her example 
today--Her example of pure womanhood? The theory 
that I just mentioned is an attempt to explain 
why a father would do such a thing--to keep his 
wife from being hurt and defiled by her children, 
That's all very fine until we examine the under- 
lying quality implied in this theory or any theory 
that falls into the category of "God won't let 
us know about Her." The implication is that 
God the Father makes all the decisions, that 
He has more power than God the Mother. As little 
as we know about our Heavenly Mother, we do know 
something about the status of gods, both male 
and female, that shows that the idea that Heavenly 
Father is more powerful than Heavenly Mother 
simply is not true. In teaching about the even- 
tual destiny of men and women, Joseph Smith stated 
in Doctrine and Covenants 132:20, 


Then shall they be gods, because they 
have no end; therefore shall they be from 
everlasting to everlasting, because they 
continue; then shall they be above all, 
because all things are subject unto them. 
Then shall they be gods, because they have 
all power. ... 


Now he didn't say that only the men will be 
above all and that only the men should have all 
power. He said they--meaning both men and women. 
If our Heavenly Mother, as goddess, is both all 
powerful as well as being above all, being subject 
to no other power, then God the Father cannot 
be more powerful than She, They are equal. 


So we must ask once again, "Why don't we know 
more about our Heavenly Mother? We can see 
now that it is not Heavenly Father who is to 
blame, Even if He were to decide that our Mother 
shouldn't come to us when we need Her, which 
I don't believe that He would decide, it is abun- 
dantly clear that He hasn't the power to enforce 
that decision, If She wanted us to know more 
about Her, then She has the power and authority 
to act for Herself in that decision. 


This leads to the second possibility: Perhaps 
Heavenly Mother won't let us know more about 
her. 


Right away you can begin to see the flaws 
in that answer, What Mother would withhold her- 
self from her children? What mother would deny 
her daughters all the wisdom and knowledge that 
she has gained, leaving them alone without an 
example of perfected and perfecting womanhood? 
What woman would turn her back on the product 
of her own creative labor? 


How close and how personal an investment our 
Heavenly Mother has in us is evident in the Pearl 
of Great Price: "So the Gods went down to organ- 
ize man in their own image, in the image of the 
Gods to form they him, male and female to form 
they them." (Abraham 4:27) 


We've been taught that we are the literal 


ee Se a et eee 


4 EXPONENT I 


gy — a — a ee — 





OO 


spiritual offspring of our Heavenly Mother and 
Heavenly Father. But few of us consider Her 
active, creative, powerful participation in the 
creation of this world. Abraham gives us the 
greatest clue to Her deep investment in our mortal 
welfare, He said that the Gods went down to 
form man in their own image, in the image of 

the Gods, male and female, Now without question 
the work of creation was done by more than one 
god; the word Gode is very definite. Beyond 
that, if a god were to create a human in its 

own image and that human were female, then the 
god whose image the female is patterned after 
must also be female. The Gods, male and female, 
created the humans, male and female, 


Heavenly Mother is a creator. This is Her 
world. We are Her daughters, It would be absurd 
to say or even think that She would choose to 
absent Herself from us, to turn Her back on Her 
own creation, Her own children. Nor would She 
be afraid of us or what we could say about Her, 
She is our creator! 


I think it is safe to say that neither Heavenly 

Father nor Heavenly Mother has the desire to 

hide from us essential knowledge that would help 
us toward our eternal goals, Then why don't 

we know more about Heavenly Mother? I could 
think of only one reason. If Heavenly Father 
will not and cannot prevent us from knowing Her 
and if Heavenly Mother has no reason to hide 
Herself from us, then the only place left to 

look for the answer is within ourselves, Mankind 
itself has hidden from and denied itself this 
divine knowledge. We've often heard the state- 
ment, "God doesn't move away from man, man moves 
away from God." How have we moved away from 

God our Mother, and for that matter, from God 

our Father, and from this essential knowledge? 


We have been given the answer to that question 
innumerable times in the story of the Fall. 
In the Garden of Eden, Adam and Eve walked and 
talked with God. I have no doubts that both 
Gods, our Heavenly Mother and our Heavenly Father, 
were present with them in the Garden, However, 
when they fell, Bruce R. McConkie tells us that 
they "fell both spiritually and temporally. 
Spiritual death entered the world, meaning that 
man was cast out of the presence of the Lord 
and died as pertaining to the things of the Spirit 
which are the things of righteousness," (Bruce 
R. McConkie, Mormon Doctrine, Bookcraft, Salt 
Lake City, Utah, 1966, pp. 268-69.) Mankind 
left the presence of the Gods when Adam and Eve 
fell, 


What is it about the conditions of mortality 
and our behavior as a human family that prevents 
us from regaining our knowledge about and becoming 
enough like them to re-enter the presence of 
the Gods--to really know them, especially our 
Heavenly Mother? Many prophets have described 
how we separate ourselves from God by putting 
our hearts into the things of this world, Alma 
stated it in this way: "Behold, 0 God, they 
ery unto thee, and yet their hearts are swallowed 
up in their pride, Behold, 0 God, they cry unto 
thee with their mouths, while they are puffed 
up, even to greatness with the vain things of 
the world." (Alma 31:27, emphasis mine) Alma 
describes the things of this world as vain, 

The dictionary defines vain as "lacking substance 
or worth; hollow; idle; without effect or avail; 
to no use or purpose," 


In Colossians, we read, "Set your affection 
on things above, Not on things on the earth." 
(Colossians 3:2, emphasis mine) Aside from the 
usual "things" that we think of when we think 
of "things of the world," what are the key 
"things" belonging to this world, to this earth, 
that have no eternal purpose or use, that we 
set our hearts on? What are those "things" that 
serve to keep us in ignorance about our Heavenly 
Mother and who our Heavenly Father is in rela- 
tionship to this wonderful, creative, powerful 
being? 


Let us go back to the story of Adam and Eve. 


According to the story recorded in both Genesis 
and in the book of Moses, God speaks to them 
before they leave the Garden and tells them some 
of the conditions that they will encounter in 
mortality. To Adam, He says, 


"Cursed is the ground for thy sake; in 
sorrow shalt thou eat of it all the days 
of thy life; thorns also and thistles shall 
it bring forth to thee; and thou shalt 

eat the herb of the field. In the sweat 
of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till 

thou return unto the ground." (Genesis 
3:17-19) 


God didn't say, "This is going to be a wicked 
world where there will be envyings and murder 


and power struggles and wars and all manner of 
atrocities and other things of this world that 
will prevent you from knowing Me, all because 
men will try to gain power and wealth and domin- 
ion." But it doesn't take much imagination to 
see how this condition of mortality, this neces- 
sity to provide food and shelter and to provide 
it by continual struggle with the elements can 
lead to conflict and envy and greed and covetous- 
ness, It would seem so much easier to take from 
your brother what he has gained through his hard 
work than to do the hard work yourself, As the 
situation grows and mushrooms and as the defini- 
tions of "possessions" inoreases and as men begin 
to mark off their territories, we can see that 
things can escalate to the state of wars and 
murders and atrocities. But it did not begin 
this way. It began with the mortal, worldly 
condition that man would have to work to provide 
for himself, 


It is easy to see how this condition of mor- 
tality can separate man from God by providing 
fertile ground for envy and greed. But there 
is also another way that it separates man from 
God. To understand this other way let us examine 
the "worldliness" of this situation. In the 
Garden, we know that Adam did not have to "eat 
his bread by the sweat of his brow." We know 
that when the earth returns to its paradisical 
glory that it will not be a place infested with 
thorns and thistles, but a place where men will 
receive bounteously of the earth. We know that 
God does not have to spend His time milking cows 
or plowing fields or driving trucks or selling 
insurance or attending business meetings. We 
know that this condition of the earth is mortal, 
is not eternal, is fallen, and will come eventual- 
ly to. an end, Work, in the sense that we know it 
here on the earth is not an eternal condition, 
nor is it part of God's life. It is of this 
world. It is of this earth. As long as men 
have to work under the conditions this world 
offers, they cannot live the life of a god. 
cannot do God's work, Now, all of us know 
what God's work is, It is to bring glory to 
others. It is to nurture and love and teach 
and succor His tender children. In this life, 
if men did not find it necessary to spend so 
much time providing, their energies could be 
spent nurturing, fathering, loving, teaching, 
healing. In other words, they could begin to 
live the life of a god, of a father, and thereby, 
begin to know God, to obtain their birthright, 


They 


I think it absolutely necessary to recognize 
that just as the conditions that were shown to 
Adam were not eternal, but are of this world, 
so also are the conditions that were shown to 
Eve not eternal, but are of this world. They 
have an end. God told her "in sorrow thou shalt 
bring forth children; and thy desire shall be 
to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee." 
(Genesis 3:16) We can all hope and pray and 
work for the day when we not only bring children 
into life without pain but also without the sorrow 
of knowing that we are bringing them into a mor- 
tal, imperfect world. But let us also work for 
the day when we can lift Eve and her daughters 
from the condition of being subject unto their 
husbands, that they should rule over them, 


We know that to live the life of a goddess, 
to be a goddess, is to live in a state where 
we are subject to no other power, for we are 
above all, all powerful. As long as we, as 
women, live in a world where we are subject unto 
men, then we cannot begin to live the creative, 
powerful, dynamic life of a goddess. We cannot 
begin to know who our Heavenly Mother is because 
we cannot find Her total self within our own 
being. 


We can also easily see the magnitude of evils 
that have generated from the condition of women 
being subject unto men--rape and pornography, 
the bartering of wives and concubines like so 
many pieces of property, humiliating and enslaving 
customs, traditions, and legal declarations to 
more subtle discrimination in our professional, 
educational, and religious systems, A real list 
of atrocities perpetrated against women because 
they are subject to the men who rule over them 
would make the bloody stories of the last days 
look pale beside them, 


We need to be concerned about these blatant 
evils that spin out from the condition of women 
being subject unto men, just as we are concerned 
with the evils that spin out from the condition 
of Adam and his descendants being subject to 
a very harsh world, 


But we also need to be concerned with what 
this condition does in denying us access to our 
Heavenly Mother and the goddess within us. Just 
as we can see that so long and to such a degree 
as the sons of Adam give their lives to the mor- 
tal, worldly condition of "work" they are in 


like degree kept from living the "eternal" life 
of a god, so can we also see that so long and 
to such a degree as the daughters of Eve live 
in the mortal, worldly state of subjection, so 
also are they kept from living in the "eternal" 
state of a goddess. 


There is much that we can do to begin to undo 
this state of affairs. Jesus has told us, "Be 
ye therefore perfect, even as your Father in 
Heaven is perfect." (Matthew 5:48) And I hasten 
to add, as your Mother in Heaven is perfect, 

We must begin, 


The first thing that we can do is to begin 
to examine our own lives and our own expecta- 
tions. Do we over-emphasize, do we even idolize, 
the worldly roles that we assume? Do we think 
of and encourage the idea that it is the male 
realm to provide, to administer, to govern, to 
dominate, in effect, to give most of their lives 
to the things of this world? Possessions, sub- 
jects, titles, kingdoms, and dominions are worldly 
symbols, Love, trust, agency, nurture--these 
are symbols of eternity. Let us bring our men 
out of the world and into their families and 
into the human family where there is no need 
for titles and authority, only pure, tender love, 
Let us let our brothers and fathers, husbands 
and sons find the true God within them, Let 
us find ways to alleviate, not aggravate, the 
conditions of mortality. 


Let us also, and it is of great importance 
to do this, examine how we idealize and idolize 
the subjugated condition of the daughters of 
Eve. Is it not setting our hearts on the things 
of this world to lock ourselves into roles of 
subjection where we not only accept, but also 
declare, that this is our lawful place. It is 
unholy to think of our Heavenly Mother, that 
creative, powerful, wonderful Being, as a person 
fit for subjugation, It is equally unholy to 
think so little of our own selves, of our own 
inherited possibilities as fit for lawful subju- 
gation. "Let your light so shine," Jesus said. 
Do not hide it under a bushel. Do not deny your- 
self your birthright. Begin to become a goddess. 
Be creative, have ideas. Speak with your own 
divine authority, live with power. Begin to be. 


If we will fight against the things of this 
world, if we will begin to allow the sons of 
Adam and the daughters of Eve to live less the 
life of mortals and more the life of gods, then 
we can begin to bring the earth to a new paradis- 
ical glory. We can begin to bring about a new 
heaven and a new earth, We, as daughters of 
Eve and daughters of our Heavenly Mother, are 
going to need symbols of strength and courage 
to bring this to pass. 


One hundred and forty years ago, Eliza R. Snow 
penned the words, "Truth is reason, truth eternal 
tells me I've a Mother there." Her words have 
been a symbol of hope for women ever since, 

But one hundred and forty years have passed, 

One hundred and forty barren years. We need 

more words, We need more songs. We need more 
knowledge, Let us begin to seek out our Heavenly 
Mother, that we might more fully understand our 
divine destiny, that we might more fully realize 
the potential of the human family. Let us speak 
of Her, search for Her. Let us pray to Her and 
sing to Her, Let us teach each other. Let us 
include Her in our worship service. Let us return 
Her to Her rightful place in our hearts, in the 
family of gods, in the family of man. Let us 
bring Her and ourselves up into the light, out 
of darkness and out of obscurity. Let us begin 
to become godly and exercise the power thereof. 


Nadine Faith 
Ashland, Oregon 


The preceding article was taken from a talk 
delivered to a stake girls' camp meeting in 
Oregon, in Auguet of 1982. The manuscript came 
to us in a manner reminiscent of the "Vanishing 
Hitchhiker," and we had to spend a great deal 
of time trying to track down the author in order 
to get permission to use it. After talking with 
many people who had read the speech and been 
etrengthened by it--from a Mormon psychologist 
who uses quotes from it in counseling sessions 
with Mormon women patienta to a young woman who 
had heard the talk at the girls' camp meeting--ve 
finally reached the author and received her per- 
mission, We thank her for sharing her thoughts 
and testimony with us. 


TARR RIIMMER 





Frugal Housewife 


WASHDAY 


I just finished doing a few loads of laundry. Washday continued after the kids returned 
No one of my children's generation can understand to school, Daddy would carry the clothes basket 
how tickled I am to have a room just for that to the lines, which were located to the side 















































purpose, with matching washing machine and dryer, of the house about thirty feet from the back 

an endless supply of hot water, adequate light- door, Mama always made sure that the clothes 
ing, solid oak cupboards to hide the Ajax deter- were hung just right so that they would look 
gent, Clorox brightener, spray starch, fabric > nice from the street and that the undergarments 
finish, steam iron, and pressing cloths, There were always discreetly hidden, 


is no need to put up the ironing board as it 

is in constant readiness and, on a rack close 

by, hang permanent press clothes that need just 

a touch of the iron, On top of the dryer is 

a stack of multi-colored pastel sheets and towels, 
store-display folded, fluffy, fresh, and sweet- 
smelling, ready to be placed on the shelves in 
the six-foot linen closet next to the neat rows 
of table linens, bedding, and pillow cases, 


Sometimes we'd get home from school in time 
to help drain the washing machine and tubs by 
carrying buckets full of frothy water into the 
dooryard. We didn't want to take a chance on 
pouring all that water into the sink because 
the cesspool might overflow, After the washer 
and tubs were dried and put away, the kitchen 
floor needed to be cleaned and the breakfast 
dishes washed so that we'd have them ready for 
supper, There would now be enough hot water 
in the twenty-gallon tank to take care of other 
needs, (The tank was attached to the stove by 
two pipes, One carried cold water to be heated, 
and the other returned the heated water to the 
tank and then on to the sink.) 


Needless to say, I have almost a reverence 
for modern washday conveniences, But there's 
areason, What a change this is from washday 
when I was a child. Then, an especially hot 
fire was prepared in the Black Majestic Range 
and the large copper boiler filled and placed 
on the stove to heat the water, It seems that 
I always had the awful job of cutting the home- 
made soap into chips. Not only did the lye in 
the soap burn my hands, but the bars were hard 
as flint, and the knife we used was permanently 
dull, Sometimes Mama would scrape the blade 
across the cement steps of the front porch to 
sharpen it, but that didn't help much, How I 
struggled to cut that soap! The pressure of 
the knife left deep red lines on my fingers, 
Each washday I was convinced those lines would 
leave my hands permanently disfigured, Finally, 
though, the soap was ready to be placed ina 
pan and put on the stove, with water added to 
liquefy the chips, 









In the middle of washing, the kids would come 
home from school for their dinner, ravenously 
hungry and hoping the washday standard, apple 
dumplings, would be ready. Depending on how 

the stove was drawing, and how many irons Mama 
had on the fire, the meal was generally on time 
so we wouldn't be late for our afternoon classes. 
















Mama had a huge white enamel pan, the bottom 
of which she'd fill with cut-up chunks of apples, 
Then she'd add water, sugar, and cinnamon and 
cook it until the apples were tender. Next she'd 
place a thick round of baking powder biscuit 
dough over the apples and steam it until the 
dough was four or five inches thick and light 

and fluffy. It was served with a sauce of 

water, sugar, vinegar, butter, and nutmeg. We 
loved it! 


In the winter, late in the day, we'd bring 
in the partially dried clothes and hang them 
close to the oven door and on the backs of chairs 
to finish drying. As I pulled the stiff pairs 
of long underwear from the line, they looked 
as though they were already inhabited. (In the 
spring, milder breezes made them dance, I thought 
it was a funny sight.) The linens, cold, starched 
shirts, and some other clothes would be sprinkled, 
rolled, and then put aside to be ironed the fol- 
lowing day. 
























Next the gray, second-hand Maytag wringer 
washer was moved from the closet adjoining the 
kitchen, and twin tubs held together by a frame 
on legs with casters were placed conveniently 
close to the wringer for a dual rinse--one to 
get the soap out and a final rinse with bluing 
added to make the whites whiter than white. 


Daddy was always bringing Mama something new 
to make her household chores more tolerable, 
It was in 1932, in the middle of the Depression, 
when Daddy brought home those twin tubs that 
replaced the old galvanized tubs placed on 
chairs, Daddy was a salesman and no doubt had 
traded something for them because money was so 
scarce everywhere, let alone in the small farming 
community of Ephraim, Utah, 


I often wondered why Mama always pressed the 
hems of the sheets and ironed the dish towels 
when she had such a large family. I now under- 
stand her fastidiousness; I inherited it. For- 
tunately, I didn't inherit those old-fashioned 
inconveniences, and I feel no longing for them 
as I settle into my comfortable reclining chair 
next to my smokeless gas fireplace and enjoy 
the thought of sliding effortlessly under my 
electric blanket instead of having to heat rocks 
and flat irons, wrap them in newspapers and 
cloths, and put them between the sheets to warm 
the bed, Such simple pleasures are far beyond 
my wildest dreams of ehildhood, 


Because the weekly washday activities spanned 
several hours and the wringer would often break 
down and refuse to pull the clothes through, 
Daddy would stay home to help Mama, He would 
also be on hand to get more coal and wood to 
keep the fire going and also to lift the boiler 
and pour the water into the washing machine. 

He had real concern for Mama and my sister and 
me, not wanting us to lift heavy things. 





Jeanne Winder 
Sandy, Utah 


Illustrations by Linda Hoffman Kimball 


Frugal Housewife 










e 


































































































The Dress 


Christmas Car 





Some people called it "the clunker," my chil- 
dren called it "the boat," my husband called 
it "the beast," but I called it our "driver's 
ed car." These names all fit because our 1974 
green Chevrolet had been in so many wrecks, 
It had a smashed left fender, a demolished front 
grill, a bent side-view mirror, a radio that 
picked up only one station, and a window that 
leaked, Each dent reminded us of the associated 
incident, or should I say accident: one teenager 
took off the corner of the garage and, with it, 
the front corner of the car, while backing out 
on the way to take his driver's license test, 
Another demolished the front end BEFORE she even 
had her learner's permit, And I have to take 
credit for bending the side-view mirror, Anyway, 
it got so that the children were embarrassed 
to ride in that car, not only because of its 
many battlescars but also because it was a green 
Chevy station wagon and definitely not a Porsche 
or Ferrari or jeep or van. 


Eventually the inspection sticker expired, 
and my husband said that we should no longer 
drive the car. He said that it wasn't safe, 
it wasn't legal, and it was certainly unsightly. 
He drove the car, through back streets, to a 
dealer in hopes of getting something for our 
old wreck, 


From time to time, as the months went by, 
I would ask about the status of our old car, 
but my husband said that no one had offered to 
buy it--at any price, Finally, after walking 
or taking the bus or asking for rides--but mostly 
because I missed my old faithful friend--I said 
that I had saved $100 and would like to buy back 
the old car. My husband just laughed and began 
to talk about buying a new car. I was opposed, 
saying that the teenagers would think that it 
was theirs and that I would still be homebound. 
Besides, I didn't want the children to have that 
much independence, 






It was two days before the high school Christ- 
mas dance and, according to my daughter, EVERYONE 
was getting a new dress, She had shopped for 
weeks for the perfect outfit, with and without 
friends, with and without me, but unsuccessfully. 
Here it was, two days before, and still no dress, 


"I've been to every store I can think of," 
she said, "except one, and I hear things are 
really expensive there." 


We decided to try, anyway. And there it was: 
the perfect dress! Perfect color, style, fit, 
everything--except the price: $220, She and 
I both knew that was out of the question, 


As we left the store, she said, "Mom, I know 
you could make a dress like that one--easy." 


I was not so sure, but I was flattered enough 
to let her talk me into the fabric store, into 
a very complicated wedding dress pattern with 
lots of gathered ruffles, a fully lined bodice, 
an underskirt, and lots and lots of headaches, 
The cloth, pattern, zipper, linings, and thread 
all came to $53.49--more than every dress that 
she had tried on except, of course, THE dress, 
We weren't saving a cent, and I still had at 
least two full days of constant sewing ahead. 

I didn't sleep well that night and was weary 
before I dusted off the sewing machine the next 
morning. 


As I cut out and pinned and sewed and pressed, 
it brought back memories of my own mother's sew- 
ing. I remembered falling asleep at night .to 
the whirr of my mother's knee-operated Singer 
as she sewed into the wee hours. I was told 
that, as a toddler, my mother would ask what 
I would like her to bring me from downtown and 
I would reply, "Terial." I remembered standing 
on a chair while, with pins in her mouth, she 
leveled the wooden yardstick against my leg to 












Meanwhile, we were all learning a valuable 
lesson in sharing. No one had complained; we 
each sacrificed when necessary; we had learned 
cooperation, Also, not having a second car made 
it necessary for each driver to say exactly where 
he was going and when he would be back, and to 
mean what he said. Our car was rarely sitting 
still for more than a few minutes; the engine 
didn't have time to cool off. 


Nostalgically, just two weeks before Christmas, 
I asked my husband about the old green Chevy, 
"Just what is going to happen to the old car?" 


"Oh, I think that I'll just give it away,” 
he said, and I gave a sigh and thought, "Some 
lucky person." 


Two days before Christmas I heard a car drive 
up and the kids all said, "It's Dad, and he's 
driving a different car." My heart sank. He 
came in and said, "Well, it's in the garage, 
and it's your Christmas present." 


"If it's a jeep, I won't know how to shift 
all those gears," 





"It's not a jeep, and you will be able to 
drive it," 


I became resigned and put on my coat, There 
in the darkened garage was my Christmas pres- 
ent--a 1974 green Chevrolet station wagon. The 
dents were gone, the front grill restored, the 
mirror fixed, and it was full of gas! The radio 
still only tuned in one station, but that was 
all right; decisions just confuse me, anyway. 

A new inspection sticker was on the windshield, 
so it must have passed, I chuckled all the way 
down the road, It was like being with an old 
friend, Finally, I had a car that no one would 
want to borrow, I thought of the old Arab prov- 
erb. "The way to make someone happy is to take 
something away and then give it back." 


Ruth Dickson 
Salt Lake City, Utah 






even ahem, I remembered feeling the prick of 
some of the pins still in the hem as I walked 

out the door, removing basting stitches as I 

sat wearing the dress in church, or having threads 
hanging down my legs at the dance, 


My brother often said that when he got married 
there would be no sewing in his home, He wasn't 
going to have any pattern pieces on the table 
or basting threads on the end of the ironing 
board or pins here and there on the floor, After 
only one month of marriage, he bought his new 
non-sewing bride a sewing machine, which she 
never learned to thread, but which came in handy 
when he made his daughter's costumes for Hallo- 
ween or the school play, mended ski pants, re- 
paired the curtains, or adjusted the hem on his 
wife's dresses, 


Now, as I basted the ruffles on my daughter's 
Christmas dress, I realized what this creative 
process meant to me, In spite of the difficult 
pattern and confusing instructions and no time 
for other things, there was a spirit of comrad- 
erie, a cooperation by everyone, a feeling of 
togetherness, My daughter fixed dinner for the 
family; my husband did the dishes; and afterward, 
my daughter said, "I'm going to stay home tonight 
and help you sew," She gathered the neckline 
while I pinned the skirt, and we talked and 
joked, She said, "You know, Mom, since this 
is a wedding dress pattern, if I have to get 
married in a hurry, we'll have the dress already 
made." I wasn't comforted. 


With the help and cooperation of everyone, 
the dress was ready before time, She pranced 
around the room and had her father take pictures 
from several angles, 


Making the dress didn't save us any money, 
and, frankly, it really didn't look exactly 
like the $220 store dress. I doubt if she will 
wear it much, and I hope not soon as a wedding 
dress, but it brought us a gift that no credit 
ecard can buy. 


Ruth Dickson 
Salt Lake City, Utah 


1985 SUMMER 





































Instead of being able to drive along picking 
up crates or bushels of tree- and vine-ripened 
fruit from our favorite Utah roadside stands, I 
hmade one trip to the Waltham Fruit Company's 
loading docks to pick up cardboard boxes of fruit 
from everywhere but New England: peaches from 
‘ Georgia, tomatoes from Florida, pears from 
ies Washington, grapes from California. 


We hauled all of it, our huge canner, and all 
the boxes of canning jars that we could find over 
to Nancy's and Paul's kitchen for the big event. 
We were all sure that we could finish off two 
f boxes of peaches, two boxes of pears, two crates 
a bn. oe = ee of grapes, and two boxes of tomatoes in one 

night. After all, hadn't all those jars in rows 
in basements in Utah just sort of appeared over 
night? 


At midnight, the first night, we found our- 
selves up to our elbows in peach and tomato skins 
with six bottles of peaches and six bottles of 
tomatoes standing in a straggly row. The kitchen 
and the house (their five and our two children 
had been babysitting each other and "helping" 


CANNING LOBSTERS 















When the leaves in New England begin changing 
from green to every color on the red side of the 
color spectrum and the pumpkins appear in long 

orange rows in the fields, I can smell chili sauce 

simmering on my mother's stove in Utah. I can 
see newly bottled jars of fruit standing, gleam- 
ing, on the shelves in her basement. 


Every autumn, I think to myself, "This is the 
year; this year we're going to bottle fruit and 
chili sauce. This year our house is going to 
smell like Utah in the autumn." Two years ago, we 
actually made it happen. Nancy and Paul Dredge 


peel an occasional peach) were a MESS! (We had 
even managed to melt down a plastic knob on the 
top of the stove.) And we had piles of fruit 
left. 


But would we be defeated--No! Recreating a 
memory was rapidly becoming a crusade, 


Four, or was it five, nights later, after work- 
ing at four different jobs all day, every day, 
and working at canning until midnight every night, 
the end was in sight. There was one canner-load 
of pears left to do, The memory was nearly con- 


pleted, and the joys of eating our own bounty 
through the winter lay ahead. But we needed more 
of a pat on the back, and somehow sitting down to 
a bowl of freshly bottled pears wasn't enough. 
It_was at this point that we changed the memory. 



















and John and I decided to can peaches, pears, 
Mm grape juice, and stewed tomatoes (a far cry from 
chili sauce, but a start). 


or As we pulled the last rack of bottles out of 
wenaeem the boiling water, we gave our canner back its 
ee New England identity. We threw a lobster for 
everyone into the pear-flavored water. At mid- 
night, we sat down to our crustacean feast, crown- 
ing our collection of pear skins and sticky coun- 
ter tops and floors with empty lobster claws and 
tails and butter-soaked paper plates. 


i Now when I see the leaves beginning to turn 
Swand the pumpkins beginning to ripen, I smell 
chili sauce simmering--and lobsters boiling. 
This year our canner will serve its dual purpose 
again, and we'll eat our pear-flavored lobsters-- 





with chili sauce on the side, 


Sue Paxman 
Cambridge, Massachusetts 


SNe eee 


PIZZA 


During the past fourteen years it has been 
the longest-standing debate in our relationship: 
How should we divide the pizza equally? Until 
ghe came along I had dated few girls to whom 
the question was even relevant. Most dates had 
a slice or two and I got to eat the rest myself. 
"Have some more pizza," I would say. 


I couldn't eat another bite. I'm 
That sort of thing. 


"Oh, no. 
stuffed." 


However, I had ultimately fallen for a girl 
with high metabolism. She had so many good quali- 
ties--she wrote, she read, she laughed at things 
that were funny and not at things that weren't 
--but she also wanted half the pizza, even when 
we ordered a large. 


To her, equal meant half, To me this was 
outrageous. I was so much bigger than she was. 
"The pizza would be split evenly if we both con- 
sumed an equal percentage of our daily caloric 
intake," I reasoned. 


She wouldn't go for it. "Half is half and 
fair is fair, and, besides, you're overweight, 
You need to cut down on your calories." 


Other times I argued, "My mouth is larger 
than yours, Equal should be the same number 


of bites, or the same amount of time chewing." 


She reminded me, "You gulp your food, You 
take fewer bites in a whole pizza than I do in 
a slice," 


Nevertheless, I knew and longed for my tradi- 
tional male rights. Equal should mean that we 
have both given up the same amount of presumed 
privilege. We should survey men and women in 
the pizza parlors of America and determine the 
average percentage of the pizza eaten by members 
of each sex. After that, I'd be willing to make 
some concessions in the name of fairness and 
her high basal metabolic rate, but she would 
need to recognize the great psychological cost 
to my male ego of going "halvesies." Between 
my ego and her longing for an egalitarian world 
there should be a point of equal costs. 


That line of logic didn't get very far either. 
Somehow the fact that I was overweight always 
got in the way. Her eating my pizza got turned 
into some sort of a perverse favor--something 
that she did for my good, to increase my health 
and life-span. 


Although I suspected that she might be right, 
I still suffered from a sense of loss. Other 
men didn't have to go through this; why should 
I? It was easy to feel sorry for myself and 
to forget the good things, the "soul" things, 
about our relationship that many other men never 
got an opportunity to go through either. 


At times, when I dwelt on the problem, I would 
eatch myself fantasizing about having pizza with 
another woman, I knew there would be nothing 
personal in it. No conversation about important 
ideas, no discussion of things that we'd read 


or heard, no little plays on words or our own 
foibles, but I would get "my share" of the pizza. 


When I returned to my rational self, the memo- 
ries of these daydreams embarrassed and concerned 
me, Surely, I wouldn't let a pizza get in the 
way of a perfectly superior relationship. But 
then the word sureZy turned to a fleeting 
thought of a long-forgotten Shirley and her 
dainty manner. 


It was insane. I had everything a man could 
want--home, family, recognition, intimacy--every- 
thing but what I had determined to be my rightful 
share of the pizza. Why was I so obsessed over 
a mere wedge of pepperoni, cheese, tomato sauce, 
and crust? 


She didn't seem to understand what the pizza 
meant to a dark-sided corner of me. Or, perhaps, 
I was simply out of control on this issue. We 
could have talked about it. We talked about 
many things. Perhaps it would have turned out 
like the time she surprised me, after a discus- 
sion, by cutting the entire heart out of a water- 
melon and letting me eat it by myself, I felt 
guilty doing it--but I did it; and it did help 
me get over my insecurities about people cutting 
convex circles out of the middle of the melon. 


Still, talking about it right then seemed 
a little silly, or a little too close to the 
ego. I decided that I'd wait. We would continue 
the long-standing debate. 


Tom Draper 
Provo, Utah 








The following ie an excerpt of a scene from 
a play entitled Auld Acquaintance by Margaret 
R. Munk of Silver Spring, Maryland. We would 
like to have published the play in ite entirety, 
but space constraints prevented us from doing 
80. Because we felt that it wae timely and that 
the characters were well drawn, we wanted to 
share part of it with you. 


Heather McKay and Elaine Dixon meet again 

one evening, backstage at a theater in Philadel- 
phia. Heather has juet finished a performance 
ae a member of the cast of a successful Broadway 
play, now on tour. Elaine hae come to the thea- 
ter, not knowing Heather is in the play. After 
the final curtain drops, Elaine goes to Heather's 
dressing room, and the two catch up on the inter- 
vening seventeen years. 


Elaine had been Heather's visiting teacher 
in a BYU ward when they were both mothers of 
small children. Through a series of flashbacks, 
we see some of the significant events in their 
lives. Although Heather had been active in the 
theater while in college, she found that she 
had little time for acting when she married and 
started a family. She began to feel trapped. 
After her fourth child, Heather could no longer 
deny herself artistic expression and left her 
family to pursue a stage career. 


Elaine, one of the people who helped take 
care of Heather's children after she left, is 
the mother of six children and has spent her 
life as a frustrated writer. The demands of 
family and church have given her little time 
to devote to her writing. Through the years, 
Elaine has wondered whether or not Heather has 
found success and happiness. Elaine looks at 
thie meeting with Heather ae a chance to see 
what her life might have been had she followed 
Heather's path. Heather sees their meeting ae 
an opportunity to find out what really would 
have happened to her talent had she followed 
Elaine's more traditional route. 


In the scene that follows, Heather and Elaine 
have just reminisced about a Fourth of July play 
that they had worked on together; Elaine had 
written the script and Heather had played the 
lead role. Heather had been very demanding in 
terms of her own performance and the performance 
of others. The director had told her that she 
was being unrealistic, that this was just "a 
little Relief Society play,” and that Heather 
shouldn't take it all so seriously. Here, Heather 
recognizes that if she continues on the tradition- 
al course and tries to receive artistic fulfill- 
ment through ward productions alone her attempts 
to improve her talents will be constantly 
thwarted. 





Auld Aquaintance 





(A portion of Scene 2) 


Elaine: I remember that play--It finally came 
off, the way most things do, It was pretty good, 
too, as I recall, 


Heather: They were always pretty good. Life's 
too short to spend being pretty good, Elaine. 

I remember somewhere along the line, the Church 
started a program called "Pursuit of Excellence." 
But it wasn't that at all, It encouraged people 
to do a little of this, a little of that, try 

a dozen different things at once--and of course 
feel guilty in the end for not being able to 
keep up with it all. Self-improvement it may 
have been; excellence, no, 

Elaine: Heather-- 

Heather: How much time has the Church given 
you to write? How much? 

Elaine: Well-- 

Heather: How many stories did you write during 
the years you were Primary president? How many 
poems did you dash off while you were running 
all over northern Maryland for the stake Mutual? 
Did you ever think about telling the bishop you 
couldn't accept a calling because you needed 
time to write? 


Elaine: I thought about it, yes, 
Heather: Did you ever do it? 
Elaine: Once or twice, (Defensively) I strug- 


gled with it, for years, It was hard to say 

no, but sometimes I did, and then other things 
always seemed to move in to fill up the time, 

The phone would ring, a friend needed some help, 
someone was sick at school, someone was coming 

to visit. If I'd been a professional writer, 
Heather--or even a recognized one--I guess it 
would have been easier to carve out my own time 
and protect it. I guess I would have been less-- 
less embarrassed. If I could have said, "I have 
to go to work that day--" 

Heather: Or to rehearsal? 

Elaine: Well, for instance. At least when you 
worked, you went somewhere. A woman at home 

is considered fair game by everybody. 


Heather: Exactly. 


Elaine: 
cuse, 


But I had no place to work, and no ex- 
I wasn't earning anything-- 


Heather: You had an excuse, but you were sur- 
rounded by people you thought wouldn't accept 

it. People for whom work meant a job and litera- 
ture meant a road show script, or a ward news- 
letter, or a neat half-hour lesson on Elizabethan 
drama~-Shakespeare in a nutshell. Do you remember 
the disaster we had when we planned that drama 
festival the same week as the stake basketball 
tournament? We never had a chance, 


Elaine: Heather, you're too harsh. I can't 
say you're wrong, but I can't say you're entirely 
right, either. 


Heather: Can't you? Has your life as a good 
sister ever--ever once--really given you a chance 
to use your talent? 


Elaine: (thoughtfully) Maybe not much time. 
Or much room to stretch, And yet--yes, I think 
so. There were lots of little opportunities 
that I wouldn't have had if the Church hadn't 
provided them, And that other people wouldn't 


have had, 

Heather: Little opportunities to do little 
things. 

Elaine: In the long run, I'd say it added up 

to quite a bit, 

Heather: Would you? 

Elaine: Well, I'm thinking of the years we strug- 


gled to keep Jeff at his piano lessons, I don't 
think we'd have succeeded if he hadn't been asked 
to play the hymns for priesthood meeting when 

he was thirteen, He'd always been embarrassed 
that he was the only one of his friends who took 
music lessons. Now it suddenly hit him that 

he was the only one who could play. So he started 
practicing again, And now he's glad, you know 
--he's no virtuoso, but he enjoys it... 


(She rises and strolls across the room, remember- 
ing.) 


And Rob with that trumpet. It was excruciating 
to listen when he first started, and I don't 


Editor's Note: If you are interested in reading 
and/or producing the play, you may write to Expo- 
nent II, Auld Acquaintance, Bor 37, Arlington, 
MA, 02174. 


know whether he'll ever touch it again, But 

I know it did him good at the time. He's been 
our most difficult one, and part of it was that 
he hated being small and not very good at sports, 
But he became something of a presence among the 
Scouts with that trumpet, and he knew they were 
impressed the Easter Sunday he blasted out "The 
Holy City" in sacrament meeting. e 


Heather: (smiling) I remember--your kids were 
always considered the musical ones, 


Elaine: And you and I know not one of them had 
any great talent for it. But an occasional chance 
to perform made all the lessons and all the prac- 
tice bearable--it was for something, you know? 
And the Church provided that. There were other 
kids, too, Kids who left on missions and weren't 
afraid to speak in public because they'd done 

it in Sunday School since they were three, Kids 
who had a moment to shine in a ward talent show 
or play, when there was too much competition 

at school and they felt lost in the shuffle 
there, Penny. 

Heather: Penny? 

Elaine: The Mutual did Qur Town when Penny 

was a senior in high school, It was a hard year 
for her. She was doing well in her classes, 

but who cares at that age? She felt like a fail- 
ure at everything else, She was quiet, and boys 
hadn't noticed her much, She'd had one date 

the whole year, and she hadn't enjoyed it, The 
hardest thing was to watch her try for days to 
summon up enough courage to try out for the school 
play. She finally did it, made it through one 
eut, and then ended up with an invitation to 
make costumes. She was so down that I wondered 
whether she'd ever go out on a limb for anything 
again. And then Enid Parsons came and asked 

her to be Emily in the ward play. I'll never 
know why she thought of Penny. She was so 

quiet . .% 

Heather: (kindly teasing) Not, by any chance, 
a hint from Mother? 


Elaine: Cross my heart, But somebody--or some- 
thing--told Enid how much Penny needed that part, 
and she worked with her until Penny surpassed 
anything any of us thought she could do, I wish 
you could have seen her, Heather! 


Heather: I wish I could. 


1985 SUMMER 9 


Poetry 


LI 


SS ee 


WHISPERED GIFTS 
(For Mary Cassatt) 


i. 


Moss-covered buckled bricks 
and ivy tendrils snag 

at my ankles in the dark 
shade, Like a jungle sleepwalk 
down familiar paths untrodden, 
I see my way to 

a smooth alabaster conch shell 
coiled around a stalk 

of stately green bending 

back with gentility. 

Amid the shadows 

one cream-colored lily 

waits, opening 

inner petals of silk, 


ii. 


Turning back the musty leaves 

of a book taken 

from a high shelf forgotten 

I discover paintings in supple colors, 
children who succumb to gentle softness 
of womb-like arms encompassing them, 


Hands of feminine dignity 

deftly bend page after page 
assuming their precious role 
over loom, teacup, book, or bath 
as if object and appendage 

were conjugally wed. 


iii. 


Mary Cassat, I would like 
to paint you 

bent over canvas 

long fingers wound around 
paintbrush and tube 
immersed in being 

one of the self- 

absorbed "Children 

at the Seashore" like 
Degas' vision of you 

a solitary dark stem 
facing art in the Louvre, 
intent on giving birth 

to your own creation 
while you paint "The Girl 
in the Blue Armchair," 
dressed in silken calmness 
impregnable 

seeming to know well 
silence 

on all sides and 

the portrait lying within, 


Margaret Rechif 
Menlo Park, California 


BLACK WALNUT 


Fine wood that darkens toward the core 

And multifoliate leaves that come late, 
Bushing dark and high to ease the Utah summer, 
The taste of desert in our bones, 


A dirty tree, some neighbors say. 

(It drops staining, impervious nut-pods.) 

They plant fitzers, flowering plum, birch, dwarf fruit, 
Short and clean, light and trim, 


Last spring we built a tall old house 

On the site of an older fallen homestead, 
But crowding near the ancient shade 

We cut the roots, dropped huge limbs. 


By fall the leaves browned branch by branch, 

Hung without dropping in crippled hand grasps. 

I watched the dying through the lowering sun and knew 
Those fifty feet of life were left 


To me, My hands upon the trunk, 

I prayed the Holy Spirit rootward, 

Calling the sap into Christ's florescent love 
And left the tree to winter rest. 


Now come the leaves in early May, 

Springing in sharp green strings, the high sun 
Lighting them against withdrawing death, and I 
Will dress the garden with my life. 


Eugene England 
Provo, Utah 


NEW SHOES 


Billy's got new shoes 

Bright blue running shoes 
Bran-new magic shoes 
Blast-off rocket shoes 
Billy's got new shoes 

Billy wears torn socks 

Big toe through a hole socks 
Slide down in the shoe socks 
Stiff in the morning socks 
But, Billy's got new shoes 
Billy wears green pants 
Burgundy knee pants 

Cuff at mid-calf pants 
Mother's poor planning pants 
But, Billy's got new shoes 
Billy wears a striped shirt 
Black, orange and green shirt 
Blueberry stained shirt 
Collar coming off shirt 

But, Billy's got new shoes 
Bright blue running shoes 
Bran-new magic shoes 
Blast-off rocket shoes 


Billy's got new shoes 


Paris Anderson 





CISCO BEACH AT7 PM 
(NANTUCKET 1SLAND) 


The melancholy evening comes 


stripping the sea of its human playmates 


one by one 
the bathers leave 


earrying with them neon bikinis and plastic balls. 


I, alone, let Mother Nature's body of water 
toss me in her liquid arms 
cradling me in the crest of a wave 


Now buoying up 
Now pulling down 


salt and sand blind my eyes 


I feel the force 
of super-human waves, 


The western sky melts 
Fire red, smokey pink 


cooling shades of blue and purple 
An enormous moon rises in the East 


A spotlight 
on a deserted beach, 


Susan Griffith Pynes 
St. Louis, Missouri 


GOODNIGHT 


In pink pajamas prim, 

her duck downy hair airy flying, 

she nurses his knee, 

coos "Daddy please 

come tuck," 

Plump hands pink and warm from the tub, 
she traces his black forest arms, 
gentle rubbing, 

pulling, 

mewing and musing 

"Daddy has lots of hair 
everywhere," 

Her face rosed with afternoon play 
she puts to the cup of his palm, 
counts each big finger 

forward and back, 

wisps his thumb with a kiss, 

clicks her teeth to the nail, 

warms his hand with the breath 

of a tired cough, 

Her babyish belly round poking 
presses against his thigh-- 

she sighs-- 

climbs to his lap, 

her fingers spread wide, 
hopscotches shirt buttons, 

stops quick; 

flat planes his kettledrum chest-- 
then tippity tip tap tippity tip 

to his heartbeat. 

Her body clean dimpled warm, 

draws tight to the snug of his arm, 
his face scratches dark down her forehead, 
hums low "Sleepy baby 

sleepy-bye lamb" 

the kettledrum vibrates 

slow beneath ‘her hand, 

his shoulders rock gently 

the beat, 

One hand curls his hard muscle neck, 
pale lashes brush closed against his shirt 
as she drowsing slips, 

sensing his kiss, 

toward sleep her sighs tumble soft trip; 
on her lips 

the haunt of a smile, 


Dian Saderup 
Salt Lake City, Utah 


CAPTURED 


Today sixteen month old Joshua 

(a dragon in diapers) 

thumped through plants on pink plump haunches 
terrorizing ants he stalked 

for squeezing. His giant head 

rolled to one side 

as they mutely wriggled in his fingers. 


Then a few swoops down the slide 

swallowing animal crackers (whole of course) 

a lightning lunge 

and I caught him, writhing and squealing for bed. 


An hour gone, I crept back 

to see for myself how he lay 

crouched in a huff and feigning sleep, 

a faint smile smoldering in his cheeks. 

With one dreamy sigh 

I swept a silent hand across his golden head. 


Then opening (as dragons will) 
a single glistening eye 

he taught me 

who had captured whom, 


Cynthia B, Lynch 
Herndon, Virginia 


YOUNG MOTHER 


Her eyes look up 

so trusting. 

A smile like a tulip 
in the wind, 


At first she was upset, 
angry at being 
a mother so soon. 


Now the messenger of grace 
has had two years 
to teach her mother. 


Deborah Sirotkin Butler 
Arlington, Massachusetts 


Neen EE 


10 EXPONENT I 





UNNOTICED °- 
LIFE 


Elizabeth Schwartz must have died. I suspect 
this is so, although there is no one who would 
know to tell me. For several weeks now the tele- 
phone has rung unanswered in her tiny one-room 
apartment in a dingy, rundown working-class neigh- 
borhood in Paris, There is no response to my let- 
ters, but that is not unusual. For years Eliza- 
beth's hands have been too crippled to write, so 
letters to her have been one-way conversations. 

On holidays, she would splurge on her small pen- 
sion and telephone me to inquire about my health 
and scold me for not yet being married. The 

transatlantic static crackled as much as her wit. 


Over the past two decades, Elizabeth's world 
gradually shrank to an area of 9' by 15', as her 
heart weakened and she became increasingly house- 
bound. The one window of her room looked across 
a narrow street to another gray tenement build- 
ing. Only in the middle of the summer would 
sunshine reach her window. No trees grew on her 
dead-end street, and traffic was sparse. Last 
year an artist painted a large colorful street 
mural across the wall that blocks the end of the 
street, so that Elizabeth had bright kites and 
plaster children to look at during the gray, 
monotonous winter, Occasionally real children 
vould play noisily below on the pavement, and 
sheir chatter and cries cheered her, When I 
risited her last summer, she told me that it had 
een almost ten years since she had been outside 
© walk and that her only excursion had been to a 
jospital when she had pneumonia one winter. Her 
inks to the outside world were the telephone, a 
mall radio, and an occasional visitor. 


At eighty-five, Elizabeth had long since out- 
ived her family and friends. She had never 
arried and had only a niece, who lived nearby, 
o care for her. Her doctor visited several 
imes a month, and the concierge in the building 
rought the mail and ran errands for her, The 
orner grocer, the butcher, and the baker all 
new Mademoiselle Schwartz and would bring her 
>dest bundles of food when she telephoned them. 
therwise, she had no visitors. She was very 
ich alone in a narrow, gray, silent world. 


But it had not always been so, In 1899, 
Lizabeth was born to a world that no longer 
cists, to the fairy-tale world of Russian aris- 
cracy. Her father owned large estates in the 
ovince of Georgia, where luxurious orchards 
id fields were farmed, He was a shrewd and 
valthy merchant. He provided flowers for the 
far's court and for the titled families of Mos- 
Ww. There was so much wealth in the family 
at, as a child, Elizabeth truly did not know 
ere it came from, 


Elizabeth was the youngest of three children, 
r brother and sister being much older than she, 
id she was a cherished, bright, and vivacious 
ild. Each child had his or her own nanny and 
ceived private tutoring at home. One year, 
en Elizabeth was five or six, the family went 
Vienna for the "season," but because of her 
ther's ill health, they stayed for a year, 
cupying an entire floor of the Grand Hotel on 
e Ringstrasse. Elizabeth remembered playing in 
large formal park with fountains and statuary, 

an elegant garden party. Her governess sudden- 

rushed up, straightened her frock, and took 
r to curtsy for a tall, whiskered, old man. 
ter, she learned that the park was the garden 
the royal villa in the neighboring summer 
sort of Baden and that the old man was the 
strian Emperor, Franz Joseph. 


The Schwartz family had a large, elegant man- 
on in Moscow, and there Elizabeth received a 
gorous private education. When she was ten, 

r father became ill with cancer and, at that 
me, she decided that she wanted to become a 
ctor. During her father's illness, the doctors 
me to the home to treat him and even had to 
rform surgery on him on the dining room table, 
e wealthy did not go to hospitals. Elizabeth 


insisted on putting on surgical gloves and watch- 
ing the operation, and the doctors consented. At 
an early age, she developed a steady nerve and a 
keen sensitivity to the sick. 


Soon after her father's death, World War I 
exploded into their world of security and confort, 
and the family began to scatter. Her scholarly 
brother left for Paris to study medicine, and her 
elegant sister fled for safety in Rumania, 
Elizabeth stayed behind to care for her mother, 
who had also been stricken with cancer. It was 
small consolation when Elizabeth was admitted to 
the University of Moscow to study medicine, one of 
only two girls out of one hundred students admit- 
ted. Just as she completed her diplome de lettres 
in preparation for medical school, the Russian 
Revolution erupted. Elizabeth and her mother 
were put under house arrest, the servants and 
house staff were forced to leave, and Elizabeth 
nursed her dying mother alone. Because of her 
mother's condition, Elizabeth was allowed to 
leave once a day to get food. Every night at a 
certain time, she would go down past the guards 
to draw water at the well down the street from 
the house, 


Finally her mother died, and because Eliza- 
beth's place at the university had been taken 
from her, she decided she, too, must flee Moscow. 
She had no one to help her, but she knew that she 
could find her sister in Rumania. The night 
before she was to leave, an older man who was a 
close family friend came to her and asked her not 
to go, to remain and marry him, Elizabeth had 
secretly been in love with him for many years but 
had had no idea of his feelings for her. But she 
knew that she would not survive if she stayed 
and, because her admirer would not abandon the 
luxurious life of their class, that he would 
refuse to go with her. She spent a sleepless 
night agonizing over her decision, but finally 
the next day, at the time she normally went to 
the well for water, she walked down the street 
past the guards with nothing in her hands but an 
empty bucket, She kept on walking and did not 
return, Leaving Moscow was the hardest thing she 
ever did. The world that she left behind was 
completely destroyed, and Elizabeth never fell in 
love again. 


Elizabeth walked out of Russia, fleeing to 
Rumania, where she lived for five years before 
finally joining her brother in Paris. By then, 
her hopes of becoming a doctor had faded, for she 
was too old to return to school and her sister's 
family was badly in debt. Unaccustomed to working 
for a living, they were unable to accept the 
irrevocable changes in their world. As soon as 
Elizabeth arrived in Paris, she went to work, 
doing anything that she could to earn a little 
money. For years she was the sole wage earner 
for her sister and her family, supporting seven 
people, She became a private nurse and quickly 
acquired a reputation for being a skilled and 
sensitive healer. She specialized in caring for 
terminal cancer patients, staying in their homes, 
caring for them round the clock, meeting their 
every need, Because of her dedication to her 
patients, for many years she failed to establish 
a home of -her own, moving from one patient's home 
to another's as she was needed. 


Elizabeth worked unceasingly seven days out of 
seven for decades, without care for herself. She 
taught herself English by reading and memorizing 
several pages of the dictionary every day. Asa 
result, her vocabulary was spectacular, but her 
grammar was rather unique. She spoke seven lan- 
guages--Russian, Polish, Rumanian, German, French, 
Italian, and English--but after arriving in Paris, 
she never once left France, nor did she ever take 
a vacation, After the Liberation, she worked in 
the administrative offices of NATO and the Ameri- 
can armed forces. She prized the letters of 
commendation that she received during that time. 
In her own modest way, she cultivated influential 
and interesting friends from all parts of the 
world, Yet, despite her cosmopolitan ways, she 
never flew in an airplane, 


Sometime during the 1950's or early 1960's, she 
encountered Mormon missionaries and was baptized. 
True to her independent nature, however, she 
always had her own brand of Mormonism. In her 


later years, she fiercely refused to allow the 
local branch to send visitors, for when it was 
first mentioned to the leaders that she was dis- 
abled, alone, and might appreciate a social visit, 





two elders went to see her and somehow insulted 
her by insinuating that because she hadn't been 
to church for a long time, she needed to take the 
sacrament in order to fulfill her covenants. She 
angrily threw them out, saying that God loved her 
just as much whether or not she came to church, 
She would rail against a God who forgot His chil- 
dren and allowed the horrors of the Nazi concen- 
tration camps or the Stalinist purges, but she 
spoke of a loving Jesus Christ who healed wounded 
souls, 





Hers was an extraordinarily curious, vital, 
yet strangely uncritical, mind. In one breath 
she could discuss nuclear fission and, in the 
next, read your palm like a gypsy and pull out her 
pendulum and cards to tell your fortune. One of 
the first things that she would do for special 
visitors was to read the cards for them, to make 
sure that they would be all right. She read 
Darwin and pulp romances concurrently, She loved 
children and, in a gruff, teasing way, captured 
their hearts. She called them "monkeys" and said 
that they were ugly and awkward, but oh so clever 
and intelligent. 


This is where Elizabeth became part of my 
life. During the time that my family spent in 
Paris, we occasionally attended a small Mormon 
branch for military personnel and English-speaking 
members near our home in the western suburbs, 

One Sunday, we brought this little, bird-like 
lady with mouse-brown hair, big eyes, and an 
infectious grin home for Sunday dinner, and by 
the end of the afternoon, we had adopted her as 
our grandmother-in-residence. I came to know 
Elizabeth when I was a bumbling, insecure, 
freckle-faced thirteen-year-old with braces on my 
teeth. She didn't treat me like a child at all, 
To Elizabeth, I was nothing but charm, intelli- 
gence, talent, and beauty. She spoke to me as if 
she valued what I had to say. She respected who 
I was and what I could become and bluntly brushed 
off my faults as temporary restraints. Somehow I 
came to see myself as she saw me, She loved me 
the way only very old, very wise people can love 
the young and help them travel into adulthood, 


Since I first met her eighteen years ago, we 
have visited perhaps a dozen times, not very much 
time to spend with someone for whom you care. As 
Elizabeth grew older and more infirm, as her 
world became smaller and more restricted, she 
occasionally expressed her sense of futility and 
loneliness, She regretted never marrying or 
having children, She felt that she had accom- 
plished too little and would leave so little 
behind her, She never complained of the stark 
contrast between her comfortable, luxurious youth 
and her poor and limited old age. Despite her 
bleak surroundings, she was always as generous as 
her opulent childhood had taught her to be. She 
was sometimes sad but never forlorn, and her 
twinkling sense of humor quickly shone through 
any depression, 


If she has died, she was so alone that there 
was no one to notify the few people in the world 
who cared, A quiet, unnoticed life will have led 
to an even more unnoticed death, 


One cold January night I stood on a snow- 
covered slope high in a steep Swiss alpine valley 
and looked out into the blackness, Slowly stars 
came to life in the sky, forming a thick, spark- 
ling tent thrown across the icy peaks, Suddenly, 
the boundaries of horizon and sky seemed to dis- 
solve as a few stars also grew bright below the 
horizon, as lights were lit in a few isolated 
chalets scattered across the mountain on the 
other side of the valley, like stars that had 
spilled out of the saturated sky and lodged in 
the ice and snow. Tonight there are half a dozen 
people sprinkled around this small earth who, 
when they think of Elizabeth, smile and their 
hearts grow warm, like a handful of candles lit 
in windows of homes scattered across a dark moun- 
tainside. From the other side of the valley, 
the mountain looks as if it were sprinkled with 


stars. I hope Elizabeth can see these stars, 
Catherine Hammond 
Cambridge, Massachusetts 

(Postscript: Several weeks after thie writing, I 


received a note from Elizabeth's niece saying that 
she had suffered a cerebral hemorrhage a few days 
after Christmas and had died several weeks later 
in January.) 








1985 SUMMER ll 


+ — --- — 


es en rere 





Fiction 





Geem. c& 
EABM: i 1% 









A BETTER-THAN-NOTHING VISION 





Cate finally decided to go to St. George for 
the weekend, It would be Cate, Maude, Annie, 
Jack, Mondell, and that new guy, Wilby, who had 
moved in with Jack and Mondell after Robert got 
married. Not quite a Special Interest activity, 
but above board and all that, The girls would 
stay in Maude's aunt's Green Valley condo, and 
the boys in Mondell's van . . . maybe pitch a 
tent at the campground. Cate suspected that 
it would be just another of those wasted week- 
ends. But she hated the thought of spending 
an empty Saturday and Sunday staring into the 
black, empty hole that had swallowed up hopes 
for a normal, married-in-the-Mormon-temple-live- 
happy-ever-after-life, That was bad enough as 
it was, but there was also the backup despair 
born of the knowledge that she shouldn't let 
herself feel so low, The Church was true! God 
was real! Prayer worked! But a circle of influ- 
ence seemed drawn, and Cate felt left on the 
outside, 

: 

The long ride to St. George from Salt Lake 
City felt longer because of the half-hearted 
effort that she had to make to keep up with the 
empty banter, "Oh, I did not stay up until three 
o'clock," Annie kept insisting, as she tried 
to hide the pleasure that she felt because every- 
one knew she'd had a date--another funny guy, 

Joe Warner, from their Special Interest group. 
And then they all started making a big deal about 
who first found the alphabet on billboards and 
license plates, Cate finally pleaded a headache, 
leaned back in the seat, and closed her eyes. 


Jack and Mondell were lost causes--two big 
babies not past the third-grade girl-teasing 
stage. Their ideas of fun included hiking in 
the hills where lizards, spiders, and worms could 
be found to put down a girl's neck; playing the 
video games and making a big deal about the high- 
est score; or making pizzas with impossible food 
combinations, At the dances, they were always 
trying to teach or to learn some new step. What- 
ever the activity, they had to be sure everyone 
did it all together--one big happy family of 
fun-loving brothers and sisters over twenty-six. 


It was Annie and Maude's opinion that this 


type of male companionship was better than noth- 
ing; Cate didn't agree. It was true that they 


es EXPONENT IO 


were all nearing thirty, were returned mission- 
aries, were now teaching school, and were years 
out of BYU, She, however, wasn't convinced that 
she had to settle for guys like Jack and Mondell, 
from the better-than-nothing ranks, Guys like 
this new guy, Wilby. Wasn't he the same type? 
He was quieter, but still from the same level, 
And Jack and Mondell said that he liked her. 

Big deal! Well, Cate didn't want him! 


She pulled herself tightly into her corner 
and tried to ignore any contact that the movement 
of the car made impossible to avoid. He could 
just quit being so concerned about her comfort. 
She wasn't his date. No, she didn't want to 
put that paper up in the window to keep the sun 
out. And she didn't want any gum, lifesavers, 
or breath mints, She would get even with Jack 
and Mondell for setting it up so that Wilby 
thought she was with him, Another of their prac- 
tical jokes and definitely not funny! She wasn't 
even interested in Wilby enough to find out what 
it had been like growing up in southern Utah-- 
Enterprise, wherever that was. She did wonder 
if it was something in the water down there that 
made his teeth so yellow. Yuck! The color of 
horse's teeth! And just about as big! Horse 
hair, too. Straight, coarse, and manure-colored, 


Why couldn't it be Robert here thinking that 
he was her date? The regret that it wasn't slosh- 
ed around the barriers that she thought were 
intact. Robert, Tall, sober, good-looking, 
successful, Robert. His people were the Farleys 
from Provo--good four-generation Mormons with 
connections. When he'd moved into the ward a 
year ago, he'd seemed like the answer to all 
her prayers. And he had actually been looking 
for a wife! And besides having a good job as 
a computer trouble-shooter, he had given a talk 
in church that sounded like one an apostle might 
give. But Robert chose Carolyn Weeks. A senior 
in high school! It would have been bad enough 
if it had been Annie. Annie's mother and Robert's 
aunt were best friends, and she and Robert had 
served their missions in the same country--not 
the same mission, but the same country, he in 
East London, she in the south of London, They 
knew so many of the same people and had a lot 
in common. Yes, she could almost have understood 
their getting together. 


And if he'd chosen Maude, she could have ac- 
cepted that more easily, too, Maude's mother- 
instinct was well known, She loved teaching 
the three-year-olds and always sat by and helped 
with the bishop's family of little ones--so easy 
to imagine her handling twelve kids and running 
the Relief Society at the same time. Just what 
aman like Robert would need when he became bishop 
or stake president, 


But even with that kind of competition, Cate 
had felt confident she would be the one that 
he'd choose, After all, she had some of the 
same things going for her that the others did. 
And besides that, she was the only one of the 
three girls who could have worn a swimsuit without 
looking like someone headed for the fat farm. 
Not that she would take any prizes, but at least 
she wasn't prone to put on weight fast. 


But Robert had treated them all like maiden 
aunts and gone after the young girls, And he'd 
settled so quickly for silly, young Carolyn 
Weeks! Was it an inevitable pattern for all 
desirable returned missionaries? 


She opened her eyes to see why the sun seemed 
to be coming in strobe-light effects and saw 
that they were passing a line of cars, 


"Look out!" Annie yelled, 


Maude screamed, And then there was a terrible 
swerving, screeching brakes, crashing glass, 
raw terror, and searing pain before a sinking 
blackness pulled Cate with it into unconscious- 
ness, 


When the climb back to awareness was far enough 
along to warrant opening her eyes, Cate did so 
slowly and only a crack, letting light filter 
through her lashes and through the glue-like 
film over her eyes. Where was she? 


There was a window. No shade, The light 
streamed in, burnishing a metal radiator with 
orange, suggested sunset. Or sunrise? Cate 
considered which for a minute before pain began 
in the front of her head. Dum, dum, dum, pulsing 
like heart beats, She closed her eyes again 
and let complaints come from different parts 
of her body. Oh it hurt! Her left leg. She 
couldn't move it. Her right elbow. It felt 
like the crazy bone was scrapped raw. And her 
ribs, She didn't dare breathe deeply. 


Why Lord? Why? Why? Why? Tears rolled 
down the side of her face, She turned and pulled 
her sore body slowly into a fetal position, cover- 
ing her face with the sheet. 


Later, peeking out, she became aware of someone 
sitting by the window. Through her lashes, she 
saw, haloed in the filtering sunlight, a man 
in silhouette, the misty apricot colors lighting 
his hair with rosy gold and coloring his skin 
amber, An impression struck like a fireband. 
Sitting there was an exceptional man--a Viking 
Thor, a Greek Zeus, a Mormon king and priest-- 
someone of great worth. Cate eased the sheet 
down and opened her teary eyes wider, The shin- 
ing stranger, showing a side view, didn't move, 
He seemed to be staring at something outside 
the window. For a second, sound ceased, and 
the moment seared the picture into her mind-- 
the picture of a golden man with firm chin, high, 
noble forehead, straight nose, His silhouette 
remained framed in the amber, tear-crusted slash 
of light. Cate stared, fascinated. The light 
continued to wrap around the figure, and the 
noble impression bounced through the room from 
one microscopic dust-mote world to another. 

It hit Cate with hypnotic taps, until she gave 
way and in imagination roamed through a clean, 
beautiful, spiritual world with him. 


Then someone turned on the light. The figure 
turned, The dream crumbled, Golden hair became 
dirty straw, skin--zit marked, eyes--small and 
deep-set. A smile showed long, yellow teeth. 

It was Wilby. Just Wilby. Wilby's mouth moved, 
and the words tumbled onto the jangling, discord- 
ant vibrations. Words told her that everyone 
else in the wreck was all right and that she 

was, too. A concussion, but she would likely 

go home soon, 


"What can I do for you?" Wilby said, coming 
to the bed and taking her hand, 


Cate shut her eyes tight, and in her head, 
in the darkness behind her eyelids, she could 
feel the vibration change as one reality brushed 
another, 


"Isn't there something that I can do?" Wilby 
asked again, his voice soft with what sounded 
like honest concern. 


Without opening her eyes, Cate whispered, 
"Yes. Yes, there is something. Turn off the 
light and sit over there by the window, Just 
sit there and talk to me, Tell me what it was 
like growing up in Enterprise.” 


Veda Tebbs Hale 
Kamas, Utah 


3:00 A.M. Sleeping bag slips off air mattress, 
Ronnie Lou Witherspoon--age 38; latent screen 
star, Porsche 924 owner, marathon mama; manifest 
block jogger, Toyota tenant, and Richmond Ward 
Beehive Counselor at Camp Kolob--opens eyes, 
Terror chops, grates, purees her heart. She 
claws her way to the square-inch hole in the 
airless black mummy bag. Struggling to release 
the toggle, she stretches the opening wider and 
gulps a mouthful of cold relief. Air, Sky only 
slightly lighter than the inside of the bag that 
she borrowed from Donna Lilliendahl whose family 
really does go camping. Faint stars. Silhouettes 
of firs, pines, She reaches across the dirt 

for her glasses, connects with something soft 
and furry, and recoils, Arms stiff at her stiff 
sides, she remembers the stuffed koala that Mindy 
Hawskins, soundlessly asleep on the air mattress 
next to hers, insisted on bringing. Air mat- 
tress, She humps the whole bag up in an attempt, 
futile, to get the mattress back under her, 

Damn. 


5:30 A.M. Oxygen in down bag gone, Ronnie Lou 
Witherspoon, age 45 and wrinkling rapidly, emerges 
once more for air. Birds, authenticating all 
hypotheses about the sizes of their brains, chirp 
cheerily in the greyish sky. Ronnie Lou has 

to go to the bathroom, but the biffies are about 
four miles away and their appearance and odor 

are downright constipating, and anyway she knows 
all the dises in her back and neck are fused 

to the stones on the ground. She closes her 

eyes and counts sheep, She opens her eyes and 
counts bugs marching across the corner of her 
ground cloth. She closes her eyes, 


7:00 A.M. Chorus of kazoos drowns out birds, 

and Ronnie Lou Witherspoon opens heavy lids to 
the sweatshirted Wake-up Committee, wearing their 
T-I-M-E cards. "Give us a T," says a blurry 
blonde figure in an enormous hat, the Camp Direc- 
tor, "T," Ronnie Lou calls, hoarse but virtuous, 
intent after all on motivating the young. "Now," 
Says the second glucose-glutted voice, "give 

us an I." Ronnie Lou pokes Mindy's taffeta co- 
coon. From deep within comes a muffled, "I." 

The Wake-up Committee is dauntless, unflinching, 
like cheerleaders in front of a sour crowd, 

"Give us," they shout, "an MI" 


7:30 A.M, Flag ceremony imminent and Ronnie 
Lou Witherspoon has succeeded in shaking only 
four of seven cubs out of their nylon, down, 
and fiberfill mounds, "Come on you guys!" she 
shrills, "You want demerits?" 


"Go away," whines Melona. The gong rings, 
Ronnie Lou drops the bottom of Melona's bag; 
she has been trying to squeeze Melona out like 
a tube of Crest, Miraculously all seven girls 
stir, rise, clutch at their shoes, and run in 
soiled stockinged feet and slept-in jeans and 
sweatshirts to the flag circle, Ronnie Lou fol- 
lows, abashed, astonished. 


8:15 A.M. Mush oozes in Paper bowls. Mindy 
layers sugar on hers and elbows Sheila next to 
her. "Want my egg?" Sheila makes a face, stirs 
her own egg into her mush with a spoonful of 

fig jam. Ronnie Lou Witherspoon spots, two picnic 
tables away, her daughter LouGene, The Camp 
Director, in her infinite sombrero and wisdom, 

has decreed that Ronnie Lou will supervise younger 
girls. LouGene's counselor, and in fact all 

the other counselors, seem to be the proper age 

to win the respect of a fifteen-year-old--nine- 
teen, perhaps in a few geriatric cases, twenty- 
one, College returnees, Probably, with no family 
responsibilites, no migraine headaches, 


Ronnie Lou looks harder at LouGene, There 
is only one way that she could have got her bangs 
to do that ruffle routine; she must have broken 
camp rules and plugged her curling iron into 
an outlet in the cook shed. Ronnie Lou empties 
her juice cup. The bottom is covered, she ob- 
Serves, with grains of sand, She catches 
LouGene's eye and grins with the right side of 
her mouth. They both raise their plastic cups, 
and across the noisy tables, make a silent toast. 


9:00 A.M. Ronnie Lou Witherspoon, alias Otto 
von Bismarck, lashes whip and tongue, The un- 
fortunate troops, alias her seven, have drawn 
iffy duty. "Capers" the chores are called, 


The kids aren't fooled, "Come on," Otto says. 
"Sweep up that floor, Wipe down those seats," 
"Yes, Sergeant Witherspoon," Melona mocks. 
"Sergeant?" says Peggy. "She's not a sergeant; 
she's a general." "A general authority," says 
Sheila, "Oops," says Melona, saluting with her 
dustpan, "Sorry, I'm sure." 


11:00 A.M. Mindy, Janice, and Melona are 
competently tying square knots, half-hitches, 
and sheet bends. Suzan, Peggy, and Lynette are 
practicing clove hitches and bowlines. Sheila 
has filed all her nails with an emery board and 
announced to Buzzy, First Year Certification 
Leader, that they should now devote some time 
to French braids. At the edge of the clearing, 
Ronnie Lou Witherspoon, aged 51, fiddles with 
some rope and figures that's how her son Willy, 
currently spending days with his aunts and nights 
with his father, strung the hamster up from the 
basketball hoop. 


12:45 P.M- Seventy-five cheese dogs later, the 
regulars line up to push leftover globules of 
green jello into one garbage can and dump dry 
Paper plates and cups into the other. Forks 
rattle in the cake pans laid out to catch them. 
Ronnie Lou Witherspoon stands behind Sheila, 
resplendent in her new French braids. Peggy, 
Janice, and Suzan also have French braids, Suzan's 
being red and stubby. "Gee, Sister Witherspoon," 
Says Sheila, "if your hair was even two inches 
long, we could do something with it." 


"Darn," says Ronnie Lou. She smiles at Sheila 
and flips one of her French braids back over 
her shoulder, 


2:00 P.M, Buzzy and her assistant Kate demon- 
strate to four camps of twelve-year-olds what 
Smokey the Bear has been trying to keep from kids 
for decades. "This is a teepee fire," says Kate. 
"It's the basis of most fires." "This is a fuzz 
stick," says Buzzy, whittling away on a fat twig, 
frizzing up the end. "It's good tinder." The 
girls all draw out their fathers! pocket knives, 
Ronnie Lou Witherspoon, making a study through 
the seat of her pants of bumps on logs, sits 

next to Sheila and eringes. "This is a prosthetic 
thumb," she mumbles to herself, "It's a poor 
substitute for the real thing." 


"Know what?" says Sheila, who has chosen to 
carve her initials into the log rather than to 
make a fuzz stick. "I want to be called Shelley. 
Got that?" 


3:30 P.M, World turns at the Crafts Shack--for 
the more modest and sedate kids and counselors, 
that is. The others bruise palms on a volleyball 
or stretch out on their air mattresses in swim 
suits and French braid each other's hair. Ronnie 
Lou Witherspoon is doing the only thing a sane 
adult can do at a girl's camp--she is glueing 
little fake eyeballs underneath some yellow yarn 
on a stick, "How cute," coos her daughter 
LouGene, peering over her shoulder. She produces 
a necklace of brown beads on which she has let- 
tered red paint, "Hi Toots." "Look what I've 
made for Grandma," she says, 


"What I want want to know," says Ronnie Lou, 
"is how you got that hairdo." 


"Oh, that'll be our little secret, Mom." 
LouGene puts the beads around her own neck. 
"Won't it?” 


"Don't try to pull rank," says Ronnie Lou, 
"I haven't got any." 


6:15 P.M. Carbohydrate Canteen. Always alert 

to the world's wonders, Ronnie Lou Witherspoon, 
sure that from the day of her birth her daughter 
has rejected all starches not flavored with tomato 
sauce, fancies she sees, two tables away, LouGene 
shoveling in mouthfuls of instant mashed potatoes, 
white gravy and sodden biscuits, occasionally 
lifting her lips to a limp chicken leg. This 
hallucination is interrupted by Sheila-Shelley, 
who is spreading grape jelly on her biscuits, 
chicken, and potatoes, "Did your father wish 

you were a boy?" she asks, 


Ronnie Lou Witherspoon stops chewing. "I 
don't think so. Do you mean because of my name?" 





Sheila-Shelley nods, her mouth full of biscuit. 


"Naw," snorts Mindy. "Ronnie's short for 


Veronica," 


"Veronica?" says Sheila. "Veronica?" 
"No," says Ronnie Lou Witherspoon, "My fath- 
er's name is Ron, and my mother's name is Lou," 


"Oh. One of those old-timey names," says 
Mindy, waving her chicken leg wisely. 


8:30 P.M. Professional pyrotechs, probably former 
apprentices of Buzzy and Kate, have built a spi- 
raling blaze whose most remarkable feature is 

lack of heat. When Ronnie Lou Witherspoon cranes 
her neck out of the sleeping bag she has draped 
around her, her view of the stage clearing is 
obscured by laps of flame. It is further obscured 
by Mindy who dropped her parka in the stream 

this afternoon. While it dries out in the cook 
shed, she keeps warm by burrowing under Ronnie 
Lou's sleeping bag until society calls, When 

she has stored up a little heat, she sprints 

back to the cluster of kids at the feet of the 
songleader, 


The hills are currently alive with songs about 
Gladys, the ten-foot high cow with twenty-seven 
"spickets" for which people purchase tickets 
("Oh pass the other udder over my udder brudder") 
and Noah (who built himself and "arky arky," 
out of--you guessed it "Hick'ry barky barky"), 

The Songleader is a young woman named Velveeta 
who wears a tuxedo, At the staff meeting, Ronnie 
Lou asked her name twice. Twice she said 
Velveeta, I missed my chance, thinks Ronnie 

Lou. Instead of something old-timey like LouGene, 
I could've named the kid Ovaltine, 


10:30 P.M, Zipped into the comfortless mummy 

bag atop the too slick air mattress, Ronnie Lou 
Witherspoon, age 94, listens to the noises of 

the night. "He stepped on something slimy," 
Melona is saying, "and he felt these fingers 
around his ears." "His ears?" asks Mindy. "Don't 
be afraid," says Melona threateningly, and Mindy 
asks, "Well, then what?" and Sheila-Shelley says 
"Ah, cut it out; go to sleep," and Janice says, 
"Sheila is afraid of the darky darky," and Sheila 
says, "My name is Shelley." "This week," says 
Janice, "Last week it was Shirley." "Shoiley," 
says Lynette, "The week before it was Laverne," 


Rehearsing in her mind all the wrong things 
to say, Ronnie Lou says nothing. Mindy's sleeping 
bag rustles as she repositions herself, all the 
better to hear about the slime and fingers and 
ears, "And then," says Melona, "these long 
feelers come out of the dark," 


"Girls," announces Ronnie Lou Witherspoon, 
"you have a nice evening now. I'm going to 
sleep. Good night." 


"Good night, Sister Witherspoon," they say 
politely. "And the feelers went up his nose," 
says Melona, 


12:00 Midnight Metamorphosed into a real mummy, 
Ronnie Lou Witherspoon stares out a four-inch 
opening at the myopic sky. Pines roll in the 
wind; the moon makes fingers and feelers of the 
branches, It is too cold to sleep although she 
seems to be the only one who has noticed. Not 

a whisper in the camp. Back home Gene and Willie 
are decadently snoring away on Beautyrests,. 
LouGene is probably sacked out in the cook shed 
with her curling iron. Ronnie Lou makes a heroic 
effort to squirm with her mummy bag onto the 

air mattress, She makes another heroic effort. 

A third, Finally she glares defiantly at the 
undulating branches, Long may you wave, she 
tells them, She shuts her eyes, recites the 
steps for poison oak and tick bites, and braces 
herself--soul, heart, and hand--until morning. 


Karen Rosenbaum 
Albany, California 


1985 SUMMER 13 


Because of the late delivery of the Spring 
tissue and in order to give you more time to re- 
spond, the "Sisters Speak" question for this 
tesue will be the same: "Do you feel that geo- 
graphy or location affects the ways that women 
interpret and live the gospel? In what ways? 
Are there specific tesues that you face in your 
area that you think are peculiar to your loca- 
tion? Explain them to us, please. Has where 
you live or have lived influenced your spiritual 
growth?" (Have your response to us by October 
30, 1985.) 


We did, however, receive two responses in 
time to print them, and we are including those in 
this issue with the hope of encouraging others to 
participate. 


i 


The life of Nadine Faith, presently from 
Ashland, Oregon, has been inexorably changed by 
where she lived and attended church. In a letter 
accompanying her contribution, she commented that 
where she lived played an important part in her 
life in the Church, She felt that her story 
would probably have had a much different plot if 
she had, for example, lived in a large metropol- 
itan area, She says: 


@in the summer of 1981, a woman in my small, 
rural ward asked for and received excommunication 
from the Church, She asked me to come with her 
to the bishop's court, to support her and to 
witness to her good character. She was choosing 
excommunication because she could no longer to- 
lerate the intolerance, even hostility, that 
greeted her actions and remarks in Church meet- 
ings. Although I barely knew her, I had more 
than once been appalled by the vindictiveness of 
Relief Society sisters towards her, On one occa- 
sion, she had tearfully challenged the sisters to 
be more tolerant of other religions, and I had 
stood to support her when the instructor accused 
her of being out of place. Far from being out of 
place, the arrogant "holier-than-thou" attitude 
that had crept into the class discussion literally 
demanded a plea from someone, and she was the 
only one with the courage to speak. 


Her excommunication filled me with sorrow and 
anger. The bishop and his counselors were patron- 
izing. Who were they to say that she was making 
a mistake to leave an organization whose members 
had shunned her and demeaned the sincerity and 
humility of her search for goodness and excel- 
lence? They sat in judgment upon her, but they 
were unwilling to learn from her. Where she 
desired integrity, they desired to be rid of the 
annoying mosquito who pointed out the rents in 
their protective netting. Basically, she stood 
alone. I knew her too little, too late, and was 
myself too intimidated by ward opinion to be the 
friend that she needed. But I remembered her 
haunting sense of isolation a year later when I 
thrust myself wholly and irretrievably into the 
same position, 


But outrage over the isolation suffered by 
good, intelligent, visionary people within the 
Church was to grow within me throughout that 
year, That fall I read Sonia Johnson's story for 
the first time. Regret and frustration and deter- 
mination filled me. I knew little of feminism, 
but I knew a great deal about excommunication and 
I believed that Sonia Johnson's story need not 
have ended in excommunication if Church officials 
had sincerely and honestly listened to her and if 
all parties had communicated justly and deeply 
with one another. 


At the time I was the social relations teacher 
in my ward and the course of study was communica- 
tion skills, Using Sonia Johnson's story as a 
framework, I queried the sisters about the use of 
active listening and clear statements of feelings 
and intent and how these skills might have altered 
the outcome of the story, nor at the very least, 
softened the anger and bitterness on both parts. 
My purpose in using this rather controversial 
figure during Relief Society was fourfold: to 
waken the sisters; to deepen their self-awareness; 
to increase their compassion; to teach the urgent 
need for effective communication skills in any 
conflict situation, 


The results were more interesting, and far 
different, than I expected, I expected no drama- 
tic changes from this lesson and am not sure how 
much of my original purpose was actually accom- 
plished, but the lesson cast me into an identity 
that, along with other challenging behaviors, was 
to eventually isolate me, discourage me, and anger 
me, The sisters now knew that they could expect 
something a bit unconventional and frequently 
controversial from my lessons. And I was soon 
known as the clandestine "women's libber" in 
my ward, 


In actuality it was months before I knew enough 
about feminism to deserve the name of feminist, 


14 EXPONENT IU 


but the term feminist in my area was generally 


lumped under the heading troublemaker and trouble- 
maker I certainly was, 


The more dedicated a student of communication 
I became the more self-awareness I acquired, 
With this knowledge came the painful acknowledge- 
ment that I thoroughly disagreed with and disliked 
many of the strategies that my local priesthood 
authorities employed to maintain order within the 
Church, Under the guise of firm leadership was a 
great deal of intimidation and humiliation and 
under the smiles of compassionate benevolence was 
a fair amount of patronizing. I did not believe 
that this patronizing was malicious or intention- 
al; I simply believed that no one had shown these 
men a better way of communicating democratically 
with ward and stake members. 


One vivid incident of that year contains the 
essence of my attempts, both large and small, to 
impart wisdom and create an open dialogue. 


One Sunday evening, the bishopric had called 
a meeting of all ward members who held any type 
of position in the ward. So, after taking our 
families home to dinner, we all faithfully recon- 
vened, "What is this about?" we all wondered, I 
had spent several minutes in meditation and prayer 
before returning to the chapel, hoping to be open 
to any inspiration that these men might offer. 
Far from being inspired, I was subjected to an 
hour and a half of hellfire as each member of the 
bishopric took the stand to berate us for our 
lack of commitment, the inadequacy of our service, 
and their general disappointment in us as ward 
members, Images of an angry god and mournful 
prophets were thrust at us. And, of course, the 
ever present, though veiled threat, that we would 
not earn passage to the celestial kingdom was 
poured out like acid on our souls, 


As I looked about me at the members in atten- 
dance, I was shocked, Here were the most faith- 
ful, Not one of us held less than two positions 
in that ward, Ina time of severe economic re- 
cession, many of us were working more than one 
menial job in order to keep food on the table, 
and personal tragedies had drawn dangerously on 
the energies of many families, Yet these people 
were here at this meeting and had done their best 
to fulfill their church obligations. They were 
not receiving one word of gratitude or praise, 
nor any phrase of compassion, I was angry. 


Despite my hurt and anger, I still believed 

that it was not a failure of compassion, but the 
failure to understand our needs and a lack of 
communication skills that impeded these men. 
So I rose during the question and answer period 
to try to reach out to these men and to ask that 
they might reach out to us with more empathy and 
with more trust, 


"I know, Bishop," I said, the tears in my 
throat nearly choking me, "that there appears to 
be more work than willing hands to do it, that 
this ward is going through trying times, We all 
know that the members! resources are stretched to 
the breaking point and that you as caretakers of 
this ward must be frustrated and worried, at 
times even a little desperate and terribly lonely 
in your positions of responsibility. I know that 
you want to do what is right and that you need 
our help, But this evening reminds me of an 
event that recently occurred in my home. I had 
asked my children repeatedly to hang up their 
coats and put their shoes away when they enter 
the home, One day I walked by the front door and 
saw a heap of coats and shoes, My blood began to 
boil. How many times must I ask the children to 
put their things away? At that moment my oldest 
daughter came into the room, and I immediately 
began to scold her for not putting her shoes 
away. She stopped me with a hurt but firm re- 
sponse, 'Mom, I was hanging up my coat like you 
asked and then I was going to get my shoes, You 
didn't even thank me for hanging up my coat.' 

Not only had I not thanked her, but I had failed 
to see that she had matured into a responsible 
individual, capable of rendering household support 
without request or supervision." 


I told the bishopric that I felt like my daugh- 
ter must have. I was doing what I had been asked 
to do with my positions, as were the others in 
the chapel, I had come to this meeting hoping to 
be encouraged and inspired and treated as an 
equal member of a cooperative unit, I was leaving 
feeling humiliated, unappreciated, and beaten. 
Surely they did not mean for us to feel this way. 


The bishopric's response? The first counselor 
rose and said, "You forget, sister, that sometimes 
hanging up your coat is not enough." There was 
no recognition of the learning moment, the teach- 
ing moment. There was no reciprocal attempt to 
understand the needs of those of us in the room. 
Frankly, there was no humility. I had obviously 
overstepped my bounds and the remarks of certain 
high councilors and past bishops left no doubt 
that anyone who challenged the methods of this 
bishopric was challenging the mandates of God 
himself, 


I left the meeting feeling lonely and mis- 
trusted. Although several women came to me in 
the days that followed to echo my sentiments, 
none stood with me at that meeting or at any 
point thereafter, Some even suggested that per- 
haps I should have waited and said something 
quietly and privately to the bishop. The illogic 
of this approach amazed me. Were the authorities 
to chastize us as a group and humiliate us before 
one another, but allow no spokesperson to emerge 
in behalf of the human needs of the group? Did 
Christ go privately to Caesar or very quietly to 
the Pharisees? What good is the challenging 
voice if it is muffled behind doors and buried in 
private chambers? By this isolation of the indi- 
vidual is all domination strengthened and all 
learning quelled. 


Meanwhile my knowledge of feminism was growing 
immensely, I was beginning to read some funda- 
mental works by feminist women and to open my 
eyes to a reality that I had never before envi- 
sioned. Cautiously I began to introduce these 
insights into my Relief Society discussions. I 
particularly focused on the need for women to 
begin to honestly share their experiences with 
one another, rather than hide behind their terri- 
fied masks of perfect motherhood and wifehood, 
and on the hope inherent in the doctrine of 
Heavenly Mother, The bishop began to visit my 
class frequently. What he found were women who 
laughed and cried and cautiously, a few at a 
time, particularly the younger women, began to 
open up to their frustrations and confusions. 
Never did I disparage any Church doctrine or 
attempt to incite discontent or rebellion, but my 
unconventional approach to conventional topics of 
motherhood, service, and obedience must have 
frightened some. 


One Sunday afternoon an acquaintance approached 
me and said, "Do you notice that every time you 
say something in gospel doctrine class that the 
Relief Society president immediately raises her 
hand and says that she likes what you have to 
say, But... .?" Yes, I had noticed, But unlike 
my acquaintance, I was not merely annoyed by her 
behavior, I was frightened and angry. No matter 
how innocuous my statement in class might be, 
this woman was bent on discrediting me, More 
than one friend noticed, but no one challenged 
her, Once again I was left alone to defend my own 
sincerity and good intentions. The isolation was 
wearing. When I went to the Relief Society pre- 
sident to point this behavior out, she at first 
denied it then acceded to its possibility with 
the justification that she feared my ideas were 
too questionable and that she didn't want me to 
use my influence as a teacher and a skilled speak- 
er to unduly influence others. 


Don't rock the boat was the message, and I 
was to hear it again and again in various forms 
throughout the year. None more individually 
painful than through the actions of Ensign maga- 
zine, I had entered the all-Church poetry contest 
sponsored by the magazine and had received notice 
that I had won first place. Naturally I was 
delighted, but I was also puzzled. One phrase of 
the poem had been altered on the copy that I had 
received for final approval. Although the phrase 
was short, it contained the essence of the piece 
and to alter it was to severely damage the in- 
tent. I called the magazine and was informed 
that the phrase that I had used had been altered 
by the selection committee at the insistence of 
the general authority who sat on the committee, 


Although it was not stated, I felt that my ex- 
change with the Ensign editor with whom I spoke 
implied that the committee was firm, If I wanted 
that phrase published as I had written it, there 
was going to be unnecessary conflict. Perhaps 
the poem would not be published at all if I in- 
sisted on its original form, Suddenly my elation 
over this recognition shriveled to acute discour- 
agement and shock over the liberties that a dis- 
tant, faceless committee could take with pains- 
taking creations, They were sugar-coating my 
poem with their alterations, It was, in the 
final analysis, a censorship of ideas, I regret 
to this day that, after several days of agonized 
indecision, I bowed to the authority of the con- 
mittee. The joy in my work vanished. To add 
insult to injury, when the piece finally appeared, 
the stake presidency sent me a congratulatory 
letter that contained far more praise for my 
skills as a homemaker, seamstress, and mother 
than for my intellectual creativity. 


I felt robbed of my intellect and convictions 
on every side, But in this instance I blamed 
myself for not standing up for myself and my 
work, I determined that never again would I bow 
to authority against my better judgment nor under- 
mine my own self-worth with worthless compliance, 


To prepare myself, I outlined my thoughts and 
then went one Sunday afternoon to a wooded spot 
near the river. I would pray for confirmation of 
my ideas, for a vision of my Heavenly Mother, for 
courage, for whatever I needed. I left the woods 
with no vision and unsure of my courage, but with 
absolute conviction that I was responsible for 





Sister. 


what I knew, that I could not hide it, nor could 
I run from the consequences, 


I prepared my speech knowing it was to be my 
swan song. Some time before I had unveiled my 
ideas to a member of the stake presidency in a 
routine interview. Although he had no arguments 
with them he informed me kindly that this kind of 
idea should be kept to oneself until the prophet 
spoke to it. I was deliberately refusing to wait 
for a prophet to speak what I knew had immense 
value to the women of the Church, Eve did not 
wait for Adam to make the first move, and though 
she has been labeled "deceived," I saw her as 
powerful and courageous. 


I delivered my speech and gave a copy to each 
girl and woman present to take home and discuss 
with her family. I mailed a copy to the Ensign, 
certain it would not be used but gleefully chal- 
lenging them to consider it, I also mailed a 
copy to a general authority whose words in the 
past had been encouraging to challengers. 


Soon the reactions set in, My bishop ap- 
proached me, obviously anxious about my ideas 
and questioning the wisdom of speaking them 
aloud, particularly "this idea of praying to 
Heavenly Mother." 


At the same time, some unsettling messages 
were coming from the pulpit. Several women in the 
stake had individually or with their husbands 
sought counseling, and members of the stake presi- 
dency began denouncing counselors and counseling. 
Not only was my husband a counselor, but I had 
personally supported the idea of counseling to 
several women, One of these women came to me and 
told me that the bishop had threatened to withhold 
her temple recommend unless she discontinued 
counseling. She called his bluff, but the intimi- 
dation was unnecessary. 


In ward conference, a priesthood authority 
from the stake told the women that unless they 
kept their homes spotlessly clean they would not 
be worthy to meet Christ. He singled out one 
young mother of eight children for his joking/ 
mocking reproof,. 


And in Sacrament meeting, a member of the 
bishopric told the women to "stay out of each 
other's lives" while warning the men that if they 
did not keep tighter control of their wives acti- 
vities they were not fulfilling their duties as 
patriarchs, 


I heard these messages with alarm, Some might 
shrug them off as old-fashioned rhetoric. Some 
might cheer them on as signs of the firm hand of 
the priesthood. Iwas appalled. I felt even 
more alone. The injunction to "stay out of each 
other's lives" angered the few women that I knew 
who had been developing a support system, but my 
increasing feminism was still discomforting to 
them, and they backed away from me, 


It was then that I began to formulate my 
speech, I had been asked, months before, to 
speak at Stake Girls' Camp. I knew now that I 
would speak on Heavenly Mother, with hopes of 
bringing to the surface the courage and self- 
worth of the women around me. 


The Relief Society president met with me. Was 
I going to continue in this same vein in my les- 
sons? Would my obvious feminism taint my ap- 
proach? In short, would I be a bad influence on 
the women? If so, then perhaps it would be best 
if I called a substitute to teach those lessons 
in which I felt that I could not stay within 
Church doctrine (i.e., her interpretation of 
doctrine), Although I had always been cautious, 
it was obvious that self-censorship was not con- 
sidered sufficient. The fact was glaring. Teach- 
ing did not mean creating a challenging learning 
environment, It meant disseminating rote propa- 
ganda, She proposed that I use no other sources 
in my lessons other than the lesson book itself. 
To save us from further painful confrontations, I 
resigned my teaching position, 


Now I was truly silenced. I could not teach, 
an activity that I loved. I would not be asked 
to speak in that stake--I could tell from the 
signs--for as long as my Heavenly Mother speech 
raised doubts. I would not risk attempting to 
publish again in Church publications, 


I took a short vacation to ponder what I might 
do, When I returned, I had determined that I was 
ready to leave the Church. A few painful Sundays 
during which I felt the distance and uncertainty 
of former friends confirmed this decision, The 
stake president had asked to meet with me. I 
chose to let him know my decision at that time. 
To my great distress, he had information that not 
only deepened my resolve but added rage to it. 
The Ensign had sent me their standard rejection 
notice, But they had also sent a notice to my 
stake president concerning my speech, I believe 


that they also sent a copy of my speech because 
the stake president implied that the copy he had 
came from the editors of the Ensign. 


I would no 


longer have dealings with an organization that 
lacked such basic integrity. 


My talk with the stake president was cordial 
and sympathetic on both sides, but my letter to 
the Ensign that followed was direct, pointed, and 
angry. In my haste, I assumed that the general 
authority might also have been aware of these 
actions because I had informed both he and the 
Ensign that I was sending copies to the other. A 
eorrespondence between us ensued wherein I accused 
him of complicity and he rejoined that my speech 
was dogmatic and opinionated. Further correspon- 
dence softened both our views until we ended with 
eivility, if not warmth, He, for his part, agreed 
that my speech was intriguing and intelligent. 

He said that he would consider sharing it with 
his wife and daughters, I have no idea if he has 
done this; he certainly has not shared the ideas 
with the women of the Church in general. 


I mourned when I left the Church, Something 
fragile and innocent within me had died, But 
something sturdy and wise grew in its place-- 
attributes of a very personal godhood: integrity, 
courage, determination, self-awareness, and self- 
responsibility. And after all, isn't that the 
goddess whom I sought? @ 





Ruth Whidden Yates of Coquitlam, British 
Columbia, responds by saying, 


@ Your latest "Sisters Speak" column seems to 
call for a compilation of some of the "unmailed" 
reactions that I have had to other issues. I 
have been active in the Vancouver, British Colum- 
bia stake for almost twenty years, except for two 
years spent getting a degree at BYU. I was raised 
in the Church in Northern Ontario, and so my 
experiences in the Church have been primarily 
from a geographically distant perspective. 
Exponent II has brought me closer to the center 
than any other experience because through the 
paper I have met and, if only in my own head, had 
a share in the lives of your writers, Their 
responses and reactions have been reflections and 
amplifications of my own and have given me much 
cause for introspection and examination of the 
principles of the gospel that I hold dear, 


From a letter composed to Exponent II last year: 
Four times a year for the past six, everything 
has stopped at my house when Exponent II has been 
dropped through my mail slot, This has been one 
of those days, I have just finished reading 
about the reunion and have been envying those of 
you who were able to share that marvelous experi- 
ence and grateful that I have at least been able 
to read about it, Suddenly the question posed 
for the next "Sister's Speak" column seems vital 
and worth pondering. The past ten years have 
been both soul- and mind-shaping and because I 
come from an even more isolated part of the vine- 
yard than Cambridge I thought those experiences 
might be of interest, 


Dominating my last ten years has been marriage 
and the bearing of five children, Enough to fill 
any good Mormon woman's hands one might say, but 
every time it was suggested that I had my hands 
full, I wanted to say, "Yes, but far more inter- 
esting is what my head is full of," Indeed full 
hands never seemed an adequate compensation for 
an empty head, 


I finished a master's degree in Canadian liter- 
ature--a literature that is replete with strong, 
vibrant women authors--six months after the birth 
of my second child, I was speaking at priesthood 
firesides on the women's movement, while nursing 
the fourth, I was researching and writing a play 
about an indomitable woman pioneer, while delib- 
erating upon a name for the fifth, The thought 
and work that went into those projects was almost 
as satisfying as giving birth and infinitely more 
rewarding than coping with the day-to-day reali- 
ties of keeping those offspring in some semblance 
of order, 


Needless to say, this perspective is met with 
wry smiles and tongue clucking by my Relief Soci- 
ety peers, On several occasions, I have tried to 
organize a women's gathering, not to learn another 
homemaking skill but patterned on the ones I have 
read about and yearned for in the Exponent. In 
every instance I was countered with: "I don't 





see the need." "It would never be approved," 

"Be very careful about whom you invite," and 

from the few kindred spirits that I have gathered 
about me, "Let's just do it on our own," 


It was a small group and even among them much 
dissension, There were so many problems--so 
close to the surface--that hadn't found outlets 
in any other organized forum. These problems had 
been brewing for some time, and I for one felt 
unable to deal with the inevitable eruptions. 


Since that meeting several years ago, there 
have been some devastating changes in the lives 
of the few women who met. One, a dear friend of 
all, suffered and succumbed to cancer, Another 
unable to cope with a painful marriage has found 
a new relationship and her gospel sisters have 
been less than understanding. We have all been 
agonizingly close to a young woman sexually abused 
by her father, Little help has reached that 
child, Others have become more separate and 
isolated than ever, Another, a recent convert, 
has begun to look elsewhere for the Christian 
affirmation that she did not find in our midst. 


These experiences have been devastating, and 
through it all, the comfort offered in our ward 
was a single fireside encouraging members to be 
self-reliant, not to depend on the Church or its 
members for support, to make it on their own. We 
owe our sisters and brothers more than that. 


The Canadian stakes of the Church were once 
referred to as the pegs supporting the main tent 
or body of the Church, That has been liberally 
interpreted to mean that it is necessary to use 
the tent to shield oneself from every wind that 
blows for fear of wavering and losing ground and 
suffering the far-flung consequences of such an 
act, Any divergence from the "program" is thus 
regarded as unnecessary and inappropriate. Cana- 
dians generally have been on the fringes of the 
women's movement, and avowed feminists are still 
considered radicals of a harmless sort who will 
soon be shown the error of their ways, if one 
does not pay too much attention to them, 


Nevertheless, I am acquainted with some very 
successful and interesting women and have noted 
that the best of these are those that do not wear 
their feminism on their sleeves, They quietly 
but determinedly go about accomplishing wide- 
ranging and exacting goals, but always with one 
eye on the rear flank to protect themselves from 
thoughtless and ill-considered attacks. These 
attacks most often come from other women, It 
seems that women are the ones most frequently 
trapped by their biology, by their background, by 
their education (most often lack of it), and by 
their economic dependency, It seems that, because 
in so many instances they are defenseless, they 
become offensive. 


Because I have become so acutely aware that 
this is a condition that I cannot change in the 
established members of the Church of my acquain- 
tance, I look to our young women to see if we 
can't instill in them positive attitudes towards 
themselves that will help them overcome the pre- 
judices and fears of another generation, But I 
share the concerns expressed in a previous Expo- 
nent about what we are teaching our Young Women 
through the programs of the Church and how many 
of them are not successfully making the transition 
from Young Women's to Relief Society. 


My admiration for what you have accomplished 
through the publication of the Exponent and my 
commitment to the values that you acknowledge and 
support has inspired an idea that has finally 
come to fruition, Just as you have been driven 
from the past by women such as Emmeline B, Wells 
and her work on The Woman's Exponent, I was im- 
pressed and wanted to see emulated the work of 
Susa Young Gates in The Young Women's Journal. 

It was my thought that if we could provide an 
opportunity for our young women to read and think 
and write, perhaps we could give them an experi- 
ence in finding for themselves a place within the 
Church, 


A multi-regional young women's conference took 
place in Washington state at the beginning of 
July, I suggested that we have the girls contri- 
bute to a commemorative issue of The Young Women's 
Journal, I had, by some good fortune, come across 
several editions of it and thought that I could 
reproduce it in as close to its original form as 
possible, incorporating some of the articles from 
its earliest years and some contemporary writing 
from our young women, Getting the girls to write 
was perhaps the most difficult part of the task, 
but in the end I had about one hundred submissions 
to choose from. It was a great pleasure to put 
the final book together and to deliver a copy to 
you for your interest, The book was compiled and 
made photo-ready for the printer on my new Macin- 
tosh in just under a month--a task your staff 
might appreciate. @ 


Editor's Note: We do appreciate the work that 
you accomplished as well as the coptes that you 
sent. Both were superb. 








In the last issue, two sisters asked for help 
with two different probleme, Because of the late 
delivery of the paper, we are asking again for 
responses to those requests. We are also adding 
a third request posed in the last article. Please 
have your responses to us by October 31, 1985. 


Reva Beth Russell from Springville, 
writes to the sister from Los Angeles: 


Utah, 


Often Mormons can't accept anything less than 
perfect, It might hurt the missionary program, 
"Image" is the most important concept that we are 
taught through all the correlated lessons, "We 
have to be a good example," 


I really feel that there will be at least a 
few who will accept you (even if you have a hard 
time accepting yourself and your parenting 
skills), These will be your true friends. 
experiences got rid of the chaff. Your new 
friends in the Church will be the ones who have 
experienced times when nothing came out as prom- 
ised in the lesson manual, no matter what they 
did. You will probably be able to give comfort 
to someone like you, who has struggled to get out 
of hell, Remember, you now have seen, heard, and 
felt too much to ever be where you once were, 
Painful as this change is, what you know now 
prohibits you from going back to first grade. 
You've entered graduate school! 


Your 


Our second response ie from Vickie M, Stewart 
of Lafayette, California: 


I am responding to the issue of the participa- 
tion of mothers in the blessing of their babies, 
My experience in this matter has already been 
published in Exponent IT in the second issue of 
1981 in the "Sisters Speak" column, but I am 
resubmitting it with some changes and additions 
because subject has come up again, 


Following the birth in 1980 of a daughter, 
after three sons, I felt a strong desire to hold 
her while my husband blessed her in fast and 
testimony meeting. When I consulted the Handbook 
of Instructions, I found that a nonmember father 
may hold his baby during the blessing, although 
he may not pronounce the blessing. Perhaps the 
priesthood was not a requirement for this limited 
role, I thought, and the idea of the mother hold- 
ing the baby is unusual only because it hasn't 
occurred to many people, Further, the blessing 
of the babies isn't a saving ordinance, one re- 
quired for salvation. Many people in the Church 
were never blessed as babies, and it doesn't make 
any difference, So I decided to ask to hold my 
daughter during the blessing. 


My bishop wasn't sure what to do, so he called 
the stake president. I found out through a friend 
that the stake president's first reaction was 
that my request was acceptable; then, to make 
sure, HE consulted the Handbook and read nothing 
about a mother participating. My request was 
denied. Both men were basically sympathetic and 
agreed that if a nonmember could hold his baby, a 
member in good standing, even without the priest- 
hood, had a good case for doing the same, Just 
several months earlier, a recently excommunicated 
man in our ward had held his baby during the 
blessing. Surely, I thought, my status with 
regard to worthiness was at least equal to his. 


My stake president suggested that I write to 
President Kimball, assuring me that if he added a 
cover letter I would receive a signed reply. So 
I wrote three pages of my best reasoning and 
research, and we sent it off. The reply, which 
was addressed to the stake president rather than 
to me, merely said that my participation "would 
not be proper" because blessing children is a 
priesthood ordinance, I was referred to D & C 
20:70, which reads, "Every member of the church 
of Christ having children is to bring them unto 
the elders before the church, who are to lay 
their hands upon them in the name of Jesus Christ, 
and bless them in his name," The issue of non- 
member men joining in a priesthood ordinance was 
not addressed, 


I was disappointed and upset. It bothered me 
that the letter wasn't even addressed to me. As 
Robert Frost said, "It can't be called ungentle, 
But how thoroughly departmental." In addition, a 
number of other parents who liked the idea and 
were waiting for my reply were unhappy. In fact, 
nearly everyone to whom I mentioned the idea felt 
that the mother's presence would add to the occa- 
sion, to say nothing of soothing the baby! Nor 
did I feel that my presence in the circle would 
conflict with the scripture, 





In the end, we blessed our daughter in the 
usual way, except that I walked up with my husband 
and sat in the choir seats during the blessing. 
Afterwards, I gave her a mother's blessing at 
home with friends and family present. I still 
don't feel that it would be a great concession to 
allow mothers to participate in the blessing if 
they wished (and some said that they wouldn't 
choose to). The idea is accepted by most people 
as a lovely one. In fact, one bishop in Southern 
California said that he would allow me to stand 
in the circle if we came to his ward, 


After reflecting on this experience for the 
past five years, I have come to several conclu- 
sions. First, my daughter was born in the middle 
of the ERA controversy and that made our chances 
very slim. Second, local leaders could allow a 
mother's holding of her baby in the circle and 
justify it under the nonmember father exception 
if they chose, and probably nothing would happen. 
But you have to have the right bishop! Third, 
the issue was worth raising and making public. I 
remember reading somewhere, probably in Eaponent 
II, about the change from one-piece to two-piece 
temple garments, When asked why the change was 
made, the speaker indicated a place in the air 
with her hand and said, "Because of a stack of 
letters this high in the First Presidency's 
Office!" I am comforted that my letter is part 
of a growing stack in the First Presidency's 
office on the subject of mothers being included 
in the blessing of their babies. Perhaps the 
stack will grow so large that my little Megan 
will have the joy of holding HER baby when it is 
blessed, 

e 


The following was sent to us from a sister 
who asked that her name be withheld. If you care 
to respond to her directly, address your reply to 
"Sisters Help--Summer 1985," and we will send 
your letter on to her. We would appreciate it, 
however, if you would let ue use all or part of 
your response in the colum in order for your 
insights to reach many more women. As is our 
policy, we publish "Name Withheld" articles only 
tf they come to us with a name attached. 


Because of events in my life over the past few 
years, I find myself compelled to reach out to 
touch the life of someone who will read this and, 
in return, to be touched, Several years ago I 
suddenly found myself experiencing excruciating 
pain, rage, and a hate that was destroying me 
emotionally and spiritually. I hungered for 
someone to talk to who would be willing to share 
her feelings, her empathy, and the coping 
mechanisms that enabled her to survive, I never 
found that person, In the hope that my experi- 
ences will help other women know that they are 
not alone in their pain, I want to share my story. 


After almost two decades of marriage (during 
which I had DONE MY DUTY!--many children, multi- 
ple Church jobs, total support for my husband in 
his upward climb in the Church hierarchy), 

I discovered through a series of circumstances 
too identifiable to relate that my husband had 
been involved for over eight years with not just 
one, but several women! During this time, he had 
accepted the call and performed for over two 
years as the bishop of our ward--this during the 
most intimate and long-lasting of his infideli- 
ties. There are absolutely no words within our 
language to describe the complete devastation 
that came upon me! I can only attempt to tell 
you of feeling like my husband had wrung every- 
thing that he could out of me as a wife and mother 
and then dumped a pile of fetid garbage on me 
that was almost suffocating me. 


I felt rage at him for using me and my high- 
energy levels to create a family and home’ that 
was an "example" to the stake--rage (oh, such 
rage) at myself for having been so utterly gulli- 
ble and stupid to have lived with him all those 
years and never once had any suspicions; headhang- 
ing humiliation that my private life was so ex- 
posed as the Church took the proper steps towards 
him; deep spiritual pain that what I had sensed 
for many years was really true; that this man 
whom I had married really never valued or esteemed 
our religious life in the Church nor the vows and 
commitments made in the temple. 


Finally, I suffered pain--the kind of pain 
that only those who have suffered a great loss 
in their lives can identify with. It was not 
just emotional pain; it was a constant physical 
pain that never let up. The first breath in 
the morning brought it on as the mind grasped 
that this was no dream, and it ended only with 
blessed sleep at night, sleep that had to be 
induced many times in the first few weeks. 


I had suffered a death, just as surely as 
if my husband had gone over a cliff and died. 
In fact, I had suffered two deaths--the death 
of the man whom I had married and thought that 
I knew, and the death of my life in the Church 
as I had known it. I became "guilty by associa- 
tion." Within a few days, the wife of our hastily 
called new bishop was in our home presenting 
me with a book on marital relationships, and 
her husband had already made the comment to me, 
"Well, I always did notice that you two weren't 
very affectionate with each other," 


Other innuendos were forthcoming from others. 
Somehow, because he was so liked by so many, 
it had to be my fault. I surely just hadn't 
been a good enough wife to him, How little 
they know. I had taken over where his "Molly 
Mother" had left off and finished the job of 
turning him into a coddled, immature person who 
had things done for him and who was confortable 
with letting his wife carry out 95 percent of 
the spiritual and emotional upbringing of the 
children while he climbed higher and higher in 
the Church and in his business life. I had cover- 
ed his tracks on so many occasions in Church 
and other responsibilities because I NEEDED to 
believe that all was well in Zion, and I couldn't 











stand for anyone to know that it was not. What 
did I get in return? Heartbreak and humiliation, 


I found myself with several major conflicts 
that caused tremendous stress on my mind and 
body. First, I had to decide whether to stay 
in the marriage. I feel that this situation 
forces the Mormon woman into a room with no doors: 
damned if you do and damned if you don't. To 
stay means putting on a facade to the world and 
your children that all is going well--a facade 
that exacts a tremendous price from your whole 
being as you try to live with this person who 
has wounded you so deeply. When you want to 
seream, you can't. When you want to curl up 
in a ball and shut out the world, you can't, 
The children are always there, needing reassur- 
ance, needing you. When he walks in the door, 
you see a stranger's face. 


If I chose to leave him going to church meant 
becoming a Special Interest!--a single parent 
with all the responsiblity of mending the wounded 
little spirits of your children, of putting them 
through the ugliness and the unending problems 
of the divorced, and (the most insidious of all) 
of enduring the criticism and censure of others 
because you didn't stick with this man who is 
now so repentent and so sorry. Don't the scrip- 
tures say that he who is without forgiveness 
is the greatest sinner? That pressure alone 
is enough to destroy whatever vestiges of self- 
esteem that you have left as you recriminate 
against yourself for not forgiving fast enough 
or well enough. 


I have the deepest conviction that the main 
reason I found myself in this position and why 
we are seeing so much infidelity in the Church 
is because men know at some gut level that their 
"good, Mormon women" will DO THEIR DUTY and pro- 
tect the children by keeping the marriage together 
when the facts come out, This knowledge frees 
them to have their way, knowing that hearth, 
home, and children will still be there when they 
decide to grow up. I've given this much deep 
thought, and I believe that the whole patriarchal- 
priesthood system sets us women up for this, 
And there is still anger in me because I don't 
see any way out of it for women, We don't have 
a good choice and a bad choice at this time--we 
only have two unpleasant ones, 


Another conflict: How do you have a healthy 
sexual relationship with your mate when even 
just a hug can trigger visual images of the 
"others," when you wonder if you are being compar- 
ed, when you fear that if you don't participate 
at this vulnerable time in his life that will push 
him into the arms of someone else even more? 
Again, damned if you do; damned if you don't. 


Even though I didn't choose divorce, I had to 
deal with becoming a second-class citizen in the 
Church, Some of our social life had centered in 
activities, parties, and so forth, associated 
with the priesthood, My husband was no longer a 
high priest, which meant that I no longer could 
attend any of their functions. Some of the people 
whom I loved most were in other wards, and I saw 
them most often at these functions, I hadn't done 
anything wrong--why shouldn't I still be able to 
go? Can you imagine the shock waves if I had 
continued to appear? But I had as much right 
there as the other women, I began to understand 
the feelings of the widowed and divorced in the 
Church--a difficult but very important insight. 


Coupled with this was the constant awareness 
of the ridiculously inadequate way in which the 
Church handles these situations. The inequities 
from stake to stake are laughable, and the grind- 
ing processes one goes through as one attempts 
to get blessings restored only serve to tear 
the scab off the wound for the wife. I can't 
begin to tell you all of the stupid and insensi- 
tive things that went on, And the lowest blow 
of all--the information given to us that never 
again could my husband serve as a bishop or stake 
president, After a lot of good counseling, we 
didn't need that in our lives any more, but it 
was the reality of truly being second-class citi- 
zens in the Church that felt so wrong. I was 
expected to forgive him totally, but the Church 
was not willing to. Don't the scriptures say 
that repented sins are "remembered no more"? 

If Christ could do that, who was the Church to 


Sisters Help 


do less? Why should my husband be required for- 
ever more to rehash his past if called to one of 
these positions by a leader who didn't know? I 
know that the policy has changed some since then, 
but it still requires special approval from the 
first presidency. It is conditional forgiveness! 
And I couldn't begin to relate how this all has 
affected my personal relationship with God and 
my testimony of the Church, That is another 
story, but let me say that that, too, has been a 
mighty struggle, and I'm not done with it yet. 


What are the residuals several years down 
the road? After two years of individual, marital, 
and family counseling, and a few years to use 
what we had learned, a lot of progress has been 
made, We are much better parents, we have a 
very deep understanding of factors that went 
wrong in the marriage, and we are much more real 
people, instead of images of what the Church 
or parents programmed us to be. 


But there are scars, one of the worst being 
my daughters! lack of trust in men, Besides 
their father, they have seen infidelities of 
other adult family members, bishops, stake presi- 
dents. Lives ripped apart, marriages ruined, 
children wounded--these men have no idea how 
their selfishness will create ripples for years. 
And for myself, there is the ongoing loss of 
trust in the man whom I married, No matter how 
much evidence I have seen and do see of changes 
in him, how much I saw of the deep pain that 
he endured as he faced himself in the repentance 
process, I am left with the painful reality that 
part of me just doesn't trust. It is painful, 
I feel guilty, and it undermines our relationship, 
but I CAN'T HELP IT! Once you have been so com- 
pletely duped, how do you ever trust completely 
again? 


I come to this: Sisters, help. Can any of 
you identify with what I have related? Can any 
of you help me to find some of the answers that 
still have not come after all these years? Can 
I ever really trust again? Can I ever really 
love him the way that I used to? What has worked 
for you? Was it all over and healed in a blind- 
ing moment of spiritual manifestation, or has 
it been one step at a time? And if it never 
really heals completely, I would like to know 
that, too. Reality has always been easier for 
me to deal with than empty hope. 


I know that there are many of you out there, 
groping for a way to make your life make sense 
again--some of you newly introduced to this terr- 
ible pain, some who are further along in the 
grief process, One thing that I learned as I 
studied the steps of grief that accompany the 
loss of someone whom you love is that I was ex- 
periencing the very same steps in the process, 
and the most important fact of all is that no 
one grieves the same way or on the same time. 

And no one can judge another person's process 

of grief. (Another pressure, by the way, that 

I suffered over and over was "friends" that would 
intimate that my time for grieving should be up, 
I remember one of my best friends coming up to me 
only five months after the truth came out, asking 
me if I was still depressed and looking puzzled 
when I told her I still had my moments.) 


I cannot sign my name for obvious reasons. 
Only a very few know the whole story, including 
my children, But there is such a need for sisters 
who share this experience to communicate with 
each other, I need to know how you have survived 
your personal holocaust. There is a support 
group for everything but this, I have wanted 
to start one, but how in the world does one go 
about it? The subject is too confidential, too 
sensitive, and Mormon women are still too afraid 
to reach out and say, "Help, I'm hurting!" 


Those of you who have bottled up the rage, 
who immediately slipped into the role model of 
"forgiving wife" and haven't dealt with your 
true feelings are only asking for trouble in 
the future--ulcers, migraine headaches, arthritis, 
serious depressions--it will come, If I can be 
of any help to anyone just by sharing my experi- 
ence, I want to do it, I have come a long way, 
further than this letter will evidence because I 
am describing long-past events, but there are more 
mountains to climb and much left of my journey 
before I am through. 


Name Withheld 

















eee” 




















EXPON NT 
Reunion —1986 


Mark your calendars now for July 25, 26, and 27 
because that's when the 1986 Exponent II reunion 
will be held at the Hillsboro Camp in New Hamp= 
shire, Join us for a weekend of eating great 
food (beginning with dinner on Friday night and 
ending with dinner on Sunday); luxuriating in 
clean cabins, and enjoying showers that are open 
to the sky. Also at the camp are boating, canoe- 
ing, and swimming in lovely Peace Lake. Tennis 
is also available, All of this is in addition to 
the open and thought-provoking discussions and 
presentations, a special Saturday night speaker, 
and the friendships made and renewed. 


There will be carpooling from Boston to the 
camp and back, If you will be driving, let us 
know, Although there are many good local hotels 
in the area for those who arrive Thursday night 
or need to stay over on Monday, bed and breakfast 
facilities will be available for a donation to 
Exponent II. 


As there is a limit of one hundred and twenty- 
five, confirm your reservation early for this 
super weekend of relaxation and conversation by 
sending your check for $70.00 ($80.00 with T- 
shirt), made payable to Exponent II, to Anne 
Wunderli, 42 Pierce Road, Watertown, MA 02172; 
telephone 617/926-7838. Application deadline: 
May 31, 1986. 


We look forward to seeing you therel 


1985 SUMME 

















IN THE 
TRENCHES— 


AT HOME 


From Deadlines to Diapers: 


A Career Guide to 
Homemaking, by Tamera Smith Allred, Liberty Press, 


Orem, Utah, $8.45. (Available from the author 
at P. 0. Box 13154, Portland, Oregon 97213) 


Fresh out of BYU and working for the Deseret 
Nevs as a stringer, Tamera Smith was in the right 
place at the right time, She was in Idaho when 
the Teton Dam broke, and she spunkily waded the 
flood waters to get the first pictures and report 
back to Salt Lake about the disaster. Later, 
she covered the "routine" arraignment of murder 
suspect Gary Gilmore and befriended his girlfriend 
Nicole, When their suicide pact became national 
news, cub reporter Tamera got national front-page 
bylines, for which she received a nomination 
for the Pulitzer Prize, Norman Mailer interviewed 
her for his book The Executioner's Song, and 
Tamera decided to go to graduate school at Colum- 
bia. But she never got there. She met her "eter- 
nal companion" and "joined the big leagues... 
of wives and mothers" instead. 


After her successful, though short, journalism 
eareer, Allred found homemaking to be a frustra- 
ting task that she could barely perform. While in 
labor with her first child, she ran out to do 
Christmas shopping. At the hospital, she stayed 
up late to finish Christmas gifts. Home with 
her baby on Christmas Eve, she realized that 
there were a lot of things she hadn't learned 
in college. 


Her approach to homemaking was catch-as-catch- 
ean: "Sometimes when the guilt and frustration 
really got to me, I'd run around the house carry- 
ing a green garbage bag. I'd throw everything 
into it that didn't move or breathe, then I'd 
hurl the bag into a back room and slam the door 
shut, Then I'd reform . . . for a whole week! 
I'd stay up late cleaning everything in sight-- 
the closets, silver, light fixtures . . . but 
the urge never lasted," By the time her second 
daughter was born, Allred realized that she needed 
to apply her journalistic talents to the art 
of homemaking. She researched and studied, tested 
and evaluated, and this book is her result. 

The difference is that she's not an expert, 

She wasn't "born organized." She does not give 
precise instructions on how to invest $500.00 
in Tupperware and labels to organize the kitchen 
cupboards, She does teach the reader to "catch 
the vision" of homemaking, that it's more than 
sparkling windows and a clean oven: "I began 
to realize my main role as a homemaker was not 
cleaning house, but helping every individual 
under my roof, including myself, to reach his 
or her potential." 


Allred begins each chapter with humorous 
exchanges between fictitious Ruby Red and her 
friend Emerald Green, illustrating the problem 
that the ensuing chapter will treat, The chapter 
gives step-by-step suggestions that encourage, 
not a rigid prescription of rules that discourage. 
Allred offers several alternatives in the chapter 
"Implementing a Plan"; "It's important for you 
to decide what needs to be done, not for me to 
hand you a master list of my standards, Each 
of us has a different situation. . . . Pick the 
plan that will work for you--or invent your own!" 
And when she tells you to write something down, 
there's space right there in the book for you to 
do it, right then. You don't have to run around 
looking for a notebook (which, if you need this 
book, you probably can't find anyway). 


The chapter that I found most helpful was 
entitled "Putting Paper in its Place." While I 
didn't copy her filing system, Allred did motivate 
me to learn to implement one of my own and really 
use it. I no longer have piles of handouts, 
magazines and bills scattered willy-nilly all 
over the house, I'm really proud of the progress 
I've made, and it's an ego boost when a visitor 
remarks, "You're so organized!" 


Well, I'm getting there. Deadlines is the 
most significant homemaking book that I've read 
to date--if effectiveness can be measured by the 
number of times I've returned to it for encour- 
agement and organizational tips. The book acknow- 
ledges the difficulty and frustration of the 
homemaker's job and offers a greater vision of 
her role. 


Cari Bilyeu Clark 
Columbia, Maryland 





CHILDREN’S 
PARADISE LOST? 


The Erosion of Childhood, by Valerie Suransky, 
(The University of Chicago Press, Chicago, Illi- 
nois, 1982, 215 pages, $15.00). 


The Erosion of Childhood was for me much more 
than just a book to review, It was an emotionally 
wrenching experience because it presents so clear- 
ly the woeful inadequacies of most daycare in 
this country. I was assigned this review because 
I am a family therapist in private practice, and 
as such am deeply concerned about the unhealthy 
status of the family. More specifically, I am 
distraught over the plight of children who are 
helpless victims of social change. 


Now, when we are hearing of more physical 
and sexual abuse of chidren in daycare centers, 
this book stands out because it addresses the 
more subtle problems of daycare, indeed the loss 
of childhood itself, 


This widely reviewed, influential book is 
divided into three parts, Part I looks histori- 
eally at the development of the concept of child- 
hood, It then examines the contemporary feminist 
views of childhood and the social scientists' 
views, 


Suransky shows that childhood as we know it is 
a relatively recent concept. Not until the nine- 
teenth century was there a demarcation of child- 
hood and adulthood, The further back one goes, 
the lower the level of childcare and the more 
likely children were to experience cruelty in the 
forms of infanticide, slavery, abandonment, and 
sexual and physical abuse, In midieval times, 
children were expected to become participating 
members of adult society by the age of five. 
There was little or no separation of childhood 
from adulthood; hence the world was not examined 
from a child's point of view. Nor was any thought 
applied to the question: What is needed for 
healthy development? 


Next Suransky explores the contemporary femi- 
nist images of childhood that, she feels, also 
fail to look at the world from a child's point 
of view. One of the painful paradoxes of women's 
liberation is that "the quest for human rights 
has resulted in the oppression of children," 
evidenced by the practice of placing children 
in storage so that both parents may work, 


She then gives a synopsis of the history of 
daycare and her concern about the breaking of 
primary attachment bonds that are crucial for 
healthy development. Suransky points out that 
these bonds cannot be replaced by impersonal 
institutional settings that are unable "to provide 
nurturing parent substitutes to which the young 
can attach themselves during the temporary and 
partial separation from a parent," Mere physical 
eare and intellectual stimulation are not enough, 


Unfortunately, this section, although full 
of important information, is difficult to read. 
The author tends to write in a technical, compli- 
cated style. 


Part II consists of Suransky's documented 
account of her two-year involvement with the 
children and staff of five daycare centers in 
the Midwest, 


Through Suransky's account of these centers, I 
entered into the daycare world and experienced it 
as if I were sitting beside her. I raged and 
despaired with her over the "overt patterns of 
deception" that began to emerge: the internal 
reality of inconsistency and the lack of any 
attachment to a staff member, I shared her sad- 
ness and despair as she watched the children in 
three daycare centers be molded and stuffed into 
the rigid structure of centers that were designed 
by adults for the containment and management of 
children, Children were not free to create any 
part of their world, Flexibility, creativity, 
playfulness, physical exploration, curiosity, 
were a threat to structure, and thus had to be 
stopped. Those children who would not comply 
were labeled as deviant. 


At the other extreme was Pine Woods Free 
School, which was committed to the idea of the 
child's ability to grow and develop in relative 
freedom from adult interference. I shared her 
disappointment as it became apparent that this 
resulted in complete tyranny of children over 
children and adults, The staff pointedly ignored 
the intentionally hurtful nature of the children's 
acts and assumed a stance of nonaction, Conse- 
quently, the children were not required to assume 
responsibility for their actions. They were 
in search of nonexistent limits, The result 
was children who exhibited competitive and anti- 
social behavior. 


Suransky generated my "as if" experience by 
giving factual observations of specific events 
and then sharing her hypothesis of what this 
event might have felt like from the child's point 
of view. She also surmised what kinds of values 
or lessons the children were learning from the 
specific events, 


An incident that she reported involving two- 
and-a-half to four-year-old children follows: 


As I stood in the corridor watching [a 
teacher running after escaping children], 
I became aware that the sixteen children in 
the block room were unattended. I walked 
back in and was witness to one child threaten- 
ing to hit another with a heavy wooden truck, 
which I removed amid an almost deafening noise 
level: screaming, stamping, minutes before 
any staff member re-entered. When she return- 
ed, I myself ran out, experiencing a sense 
of relief, I left the school soon afterward 
with a splitting headache, filled with a 
sense of nausea, 


Surnarsky then comments: 


I too was happy to escape from the room 
and school that day, and wondered if my exper- 
ience at all resembled that of the children, 
They were contained within an atmosphere of 
chaos, confusion, and impersonality fifty 
hours a week, My biweekly visits left me 
feeling physically ill and shaken (113). 


Part III draws together the observations of 
the daycare centers and compares and contrasts 
the needs of the children and adults on such 
dimensions as play, space and time, spontaneity, 
and structure and freedom, Suransky's message 
that healthy childhood is in danger is most rivet- 
ing here. Her suggestions for healthy daycare 
finally give a ray of hope in this disturbing 
picture, 


Part III was outstanding, not for its written 
style, but for its emotional impact. The momentum 
of the book comes to its peak here, The irrever- 
sible long term consequences of these types of 
dayeare are made clear. Her conclusions basically 
address two essential elements of a healthy child- 
hood. One, every baby must have a stable human 
partnership (or bonding) with one or more adults. 
Two, the child must have the opportunity for 
unstructured play, wherein the child restructures, 
invents, explores the world, and "becomes her- 
self." The stable partnership needs to be a 
solid base from which the child can venture out 
and return, to receive emotional nurturing. 

Hugs, assurances of safety, requests of the child 
that are appropriate to the child's age and emo- 
tional availability form the base from which a 
healthy child develops. Instead, children are 
being placed in storage for many hours every day, 
with indifferent custodians and a curriculum that 
is based on the needs of the institution and the 
adult world. Suransky suggests that mass daycare 
or profit daycare seems to be fostering "diseases 
of nonattachment," alienation, indifference, 
antagonism and violence, and indeed "rob a baby 
of her humanity." 


In the last few pages of the book, Suransky 
takes a look at how some of the socialist coun- 
tries are taking care of their young. She feels 
there is "much to learn and much to criticize" 
but at least care of the young is central rather 
than peripheral to national priorities, 


The last page is devoted to suggestions for 
dayeare, Cooperative childcare centers that 
belong to the parents and children of a given 
community would remove or reduce abuses of 
profit centers, The cooperative should incor- 
porate elements of the workplace, the home, the 
old and the young "so as to become something 
of another home." The groups should consist 
of fifteen to twenty families and be situated 
in the neighborhood, They should receive state 
and federal subsidies, and both mothers and fath- 
ers would be required to participate for four 
or five hours per week, Teachers should receive 
appropriate salaries, commensurate with the impor- 
tance of their jobs, She then listed some of 
the centers in the country that are "child friend- 
ly." These are Corntree Childcare Cooperative 
in Ann Arbor, Michigan; the Bank Street College 
of Education Parent-Child Cooperative in New 
York, New York; Yale Child Study Center; and 
the Syracuse Children's Center. 


After the powerful impact of the rest of the 
book, the brevity of her suggestions was surpris- 
ing and disappointing. I would like to have seen 
at least a whole chapter on suggestions. She 
did not address on-site dayeare sponsored by 
companies, in-home daycare, or the differences 
between full-time daycare and part-time preschool, 


This book treats a crucial subject. Good 
dayeare is rare yet obtainable. Most daycare 
efforts do not meet the needs of the child but 
do meet the maintenance needs of the center. As 
a result of this book, I have a better sense of 
the elements that I want to find in good daycare, 
such as stable personnel, time for free play, 
and a structure that is not too rigid but does 
teach personal responsibility to the children. 
The book is well researched and well organized. 
One weakness lies in its prose; the author simply 
uses too many ten-dollar words when one-dollar 
words would do, The other weakness is the skimpy 
page of suggestions for good daycare. However, 
those with persistence will get through the prose 
and will be rewarded by the stimulating ideas 
of childhood and childcare that the author 


presents. 
Camille DeLong 


Mapleton, Utah 


Book Review 


JOSEPH’S HAND, 
JOSEPH’S MIND 


The Personal Writings of Joseph Smith, by Dean 
C. Jessee, comp, and ed, Salt Lake City: Deseret 
Book Company, 1984. 736 pp. $19.95 


This long-awaited and highly acclaimed edition 
of the near-complete Joseph Smith holographic 
writings was a shoo-in for the Mormon History 
Association's prize for best edited document, 

It includes almost every known sentence in Joseph 
Smith's own hand (except for some routine and 
repetitive business notes and receipts), all 
but one of his known letters, and some documents, 


Undoubtedly, other documents written in 
Joseph's hand will continue to come to light 
as document hunters like Mark Hofmann scour New 
England letter collections. One such letter 
that came forth since Jessee started this work 
is the controversial "hazel-stick letter, written 
by Joseph Smith to Josiah Stowell in 1825, in 
which Joseph describes occult techniques for 
locating buried treasure. This is the earliest 
known writing in Joseph's hand, 


The book is a writer's delight. Jessee has 
made determined efforts to identify each 
individual mentioned in a letter or document 
and to provide a brief historical context for 
each item, The handwriting of the entries--some 
begun by Joseph and finished by a scribe--is 
identified, giving us a lively sense of 
collaborative creative process, The actual words 
of Joesph Smith are in boldface, 


Photographs of the documents accompanying 
the printed text are so carefully done that they 
can be read with ease. In fact, the effort to 
reproduce the texts has been beautifully reflected 
in the design of the book--ragged right instead 
of an even right-hand margin so that no word 
is hyphenated. Every line breathes with editorial 
fidelity to the original. Deseret Book deserves’ 
a prize of its own, not only for the painstaking 
production but for the intelligence of the design 
and the physical beauty of the results. 


The question for the lay reader is, what dif- 
ference does it make? Yes, scholars need this 
kind of book, but do we? It's not easy to puzzle 
through some of Joseph's sentences (many of which 


have no terminal punctuation) and distracting 
syntax and spelling. Much of this information 
is also printed in History of the Church. 
Furthermore, Jessee has wisely chosen not to 
tell the story of the Church again with these 
documents as plums in the pudding. Clearly, 
the reader needs another history of the Church 
in hand for full understanding. (I'd recommend 
Linda King Newell and Valeen Tippetts Avery's 
Mormon Enigma: Emma Hale Smith as the best com- 
panion reader, with Donna Hill's Joseph Smith, 
the First Mormon as close runner-up.) 


So does an ordinary Mormon need this book? 
For me, yes. Reading chronologically through 
the documents that came from Joseph's hand shifted 
my awareness in a new way--even after History 
of the Church and Comprehensive History of the 
Church and all the manual and seminary variations 
thereof, after Brodie, after Hill, after Newell 
and Avery, after two decades of journal articles. 
There were still surprises, 


I had not realized, for instance, how deeply 
Joseph was embedded in the context of his family. 
I was touched by his anxiety for his ill father, 
recorded for a succession of days (62-63), and 
his joy at his recovery. When Samuel's wife 
was brought to the point of death during the 
birth of her first child, Joseph went "into the 
field and bowed before the Lord and called upon 
him in mighty prayer in her behalf" (65). She 
gave birth to a healthy child and recovered. 

His journal breaks into spontaneous prayer and 
blessing in entry after entry. In Kirtland, 

I had a sense of the little church struggling 

for forms into which to channel their growing 
spiritual desires: prayer, washing of feet, vision 
meetings, the beginning of temple ordinances, 

the patriarchal blessings and other forms. I 
realized anew the need of relgious expression 

to find form, and I see a parallel search in 
personal spirituality, 


The sense that these writings were directed 
toward a particular audience was strong. I had 
never realized, for instance, that the 1838 
version of the First Vision, the one now canonized 
in the Pearl of Great Price, is the version that 
Joseph Smith told the self-styled "Joshua the 
Jewish minister" whom Joseph found to be in 
possesion of [a] wicked and depraved spirit" 
(79). Joseph's outpouring of anguish and divine 
comforting in Liberty Jail were dictated to a 
young Saint imprisoned with him and sent first 
in a letter to Emma, then later to the Church, 


Nor had I understood his poverty. The poster 
of Joseph on the front of the missionary tracts 
that we give’ people shows him well-fed and well- 
dressed, holding a Bible with accustomed ease-- 
not a working man's implements--with a 
bustling city rising in the background. In 
contrast, the desperation of financial insecurity 
haunts his letters, surfacing in his notes begging 
a load of wood for winter, his gratitude when 
someone relieves his wants, his willingness in 
1836 to go with Hyrum, Oliver Cowdry, and Sidney 
Rigdon to Salem, Massachusetts, to seek treasure 
buried in the cellar of a house only known to 
Church member William Burgess (349)--an 
unsuccessful venture, 


Another surprise was that some of the smooth 
and eloquent paragraphs that read with a certain 
rhetorical rightness in print seem strained, 
even pompous in holograph, as though Joseph were 
trying on an elaborately embroidered costume 
to see how it fit. 


You can't speed read through this material, 
I had to slow down to test the cadence of the 
words in my mind and decide where one sentence 
ended and another began, It made me pay attention 
in a new way, There is a great feeling of 
intimacy in seeing the photographs of the 
documents, the shape of the letters somehow 
registering in my brain with the immediacy of 
a hand on my arm, Any attempt to understand 
Joseph's tenderheartedness and undeniable charisma 
must start with these documents; the love of 
those who knew him began in his own whole-hearted 
and generous affection for them. 


It couldn't have been easy for Joseph to 
produce this record, At one point, he cuts short 
a letter to Emma from Zion's Camp because he 
is sitting on the ground, writing on his knees. 
At another point in Kirtland, in the middle of 
a long and much seratched-up document, he 
spontaneously prays: "Oh Lord God deliver us 
in thy due time from the little narrow prison 
almost as it were total darkness of paper pen 
and ink and a crooked broken scattered and 
imperfect language" (261-62). I am profoundly 
grateful for those efforts. Jessee ends his 
preface by saying, "Here, then, in these pages, 
is Joseph Smith presented as clearly as his own 
writings will allow." The question with which 
every reader turns the page is, what is that 
clearer picture like? In my case, I found a 
man to love, not a prodigy to be marveled at. 


Lavina Fielding Anderson 
Salt Lake City, Utah 





A CELEBRATION OF LIFE 


Last month, my mother's father died. In 
California, after the funeral and the short cere- 
mony at the mausoleum, we visited the grave of my 
mother's mother who had died many years before. 
It was a bright windy afternoon. I watched my 
mother as she stooped to put a few roses on the 
grave, The wind ruffled her skirt and hair. At 
that moment--as I watched my mother standing at 
her own mother's grave--life seemed infinitely 
precious to me. I saw my mother perhaps more 
clearly than I ever have before, not only as an 
extension of me and my life, but also as a dis- 
tinct individual, possessing her own hidden life 
with her own inner pleasures, dark corners of 
fear, disappointment, regret, idiosyncracies-- 
with her own peculiar way of encountering and 
interpreting the life around her. 


To celebrate her life and to give a taste of 
her flavorful personality, as well as to encourage 
others to look closely at the wonderfully complex 
women who are, or were, their mothers, I am writ- 
ing this tribute, 


The morning that my grandfather died, my mother 
and I sat at the breakfast table talking. She 
started to cry and then laugh in the same breath 
as she said, "I just keep thinking about what Big 
Bug is doing right now. He's seeing my mom and 
Bunkins and Mrs, Cat." That was what she called 
her dad: Big Bug. Her stepmother is Lady Bug, 
and she's Tiny Bug. Bunkins was her grandfather. 
Giving affectionate nicknames, however odd those 
names may seem (she'd probably disinherit me if I 
told all of them), comes as naturally as breathing 
to my mom, 


When I was growing up my name was Willie Woo 
of the Willie Woo Brigade of Girls, When it was 
dinner time, she'd stand on the porch calling, 
"Willie, Willie, Willie, Willie Woo--come home to 
eat." She'd say it so fast that it would tie my 
tongue to imitate her. She appointed me president 
of the Brigade of Girls. The Brigade followed me 
everywhere, and she'd regularly ask me what they 
were up to. She still does, The-last time I 
told her that they had gone on an extended tour 
of the world so she might as well forget about 
them for awhile. The next day she wanted to know 


if I'd gotten any postcards. 





But back to Mrs, Cat, who would be among the 
folks greeting my grandfather in heaven. Mrs. Cat 
isn't a nickname. She's a real cat that belonged 
to my mother's family when she was a child. I 
sometimes think that when my mother imagines the 
celestial kingdom she sees worlds without end 
populated by cats, and a few lucky humans. Right 
now she has three pet cats and a dog. She calls 
them her "furry friends." (Her piano and organ 
are "wooden friends.") 


I remember a morning when I was in high 
school: My mother came into the kitchen very 
excitedly and announced, "I woke up at five 
o'clock today. Because I couldn't get back to 
sleep, I wrote a song about Carty." Carty is her 
cat with perfectly symmetrical stripes. She 
Sang her song that began, "I know a cat, a fat 
symmetrical cat. His name is Cart, he thinks 
he's really smart." Once, in a fanciful mood, 
she came into the house and said to the family, 
"Mrs, Douglas next door just offered me a million 
dollars for Carty, but I told her no. Then she 
offered me a million dollars for just one of 
his stripes, but of course I told her there are 
some things in this world that you can't buy 
for money." 


My mother is not merely an eccentric, nick- 
naming, pet owner. The texture of her life goes 
far deeper. She's a homemaker, though certainly 
not in the stereotypical sense of the word. She 
bakes bread, but unlike the woman in a ruffled 
apron on a recent Ensign cover, my mom throws the 
ingredients into the bread maker and leaves the 
dough to rise while she spends three or four 
hours practicing her instruments. She practices 
like that every day. 


I've been working at home this past winter, so 
while I'm pecking away at the typewriter down- 
stairs I get Beethoven through the ceiling. I've 
learned to tune Beethoven out so I can get some 
work done, but when she starts in on "The Bumble 
Boogie," I have to sit back and tap my feet a 
bit. On bread-making days, I'll come upstairs 
for lunch and find that the long-forgotten dough 
has not only risen but has practically taken over 
the kitchen and is heading down the.hall. 


Mom is capable of intense, single-minded devo- 
tion to whatever she loves. Things like bread 
dough go by the wayside for her music, her pets, 
and most importantly--and by far the most passion- 
ately--her family, In our family, we have a sort 
of unofficial motto: "If it's not worth doing, 
it's not worth doing well." But when my mother 


does think something is worth doing, she puts 
herself to the task completely. I have felt her 
devotion to me on many occasions, I remember a 
time several years ago when I was living alone in 
Provo and attending BYU. It was a particularly 
difficult period in my life, and one night at 
2:00 A.M. I felt that I could not be alone, I 
called her in Salt Lake, waking her from a sound 
sleep. Before I had completed my first sentence, 
she said, "I'll be there in an hour." And she 
was, I slept restlessly, and she would reach 
over and touch my hand or hair and tell me that 
she was there and it was alright. She stayed for 
three days. 


This is not to say that she hasn't had tensions 
and conflicts with her five strong-willed chil- 
dren, There have been disappointments on both 
sides of all fences, and some sorrows. Notwith- 
standing, however, none of us ever doubts that we 
are loved by a force almost superhuman, loved 
with a fierceness almost frightening. I hope 
that she cannot doubt our love in return. 


My mother has an enormous capacity for compas- 
sion, I remember one day when she saw a girl 
with a disfiguring skin disease in a shopping 
mall. She came home and wept bitterly and prayed 
for that girl. (This is just an aside, but speak- 
ing of disfiguring skin diseases, Mom always says 
that if she ever gets to create a world of her 
own the first thing she is going to do is abolish 
acne, To quote her: "Teenagers have enough to 
cope with, without that too. I can't imagine how 
such a thing could have slipped by the Lord!") 
Each week, my mother sends letters to the old, 
and too-often forgotten relatives in our family. 


On many occasions, friends of mine or of my 
brothers or sister have come to live in my par- 
ents' house because they had no place else to go, 
no money, or a bad home situation. It isn't easy 
for my mom to have extra people in the house, 

She values her privacy greatly. It makes her 
tense and gives her headaches when there are too 
many infringements on that privacy. Nevertheless, 
when the need has arisen, as it has so many times, 
she has invited our wayward friends to share her 
home and food. Once, my brothers brought home a 
hitchhiker from Idaho, with whom they'd become 
acquainted three days before, He stayed three 
months. I have a friend who is excommunicated 
from the Church, She is without a husband and is 
the mother of a young son, This friend recently 
was forced to move from her apartment on short 


continued on page 20 


1985_ SUMMER 


19 








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A CELEBRATION OF LIFE 


continued from page 19 


notice, At the time she had a bad case of flu. 
My mother spent two days packing her belongings 
for her, loading them into a truck, and getting 
her settled in a new place. All this, when she 
would a thousand times rather have been home 
playing Rachmaninoff, Actually, it's not Rach- 
maninoff anymore. He gave her piano elbow--just 
like tennis elbow--with all his crashing chords, 
All this, when she would a thousand times rather 
be home playing Chopin, 


I don't particularly believe in the proverb 
"Train up a child in the way he should go, and 
when he is old he will not depart from it." I 
know of plenty of children trained up good who 
went not-so-good-~a third of the host of heaven 
in the preexistence, for starters, Nevertheless, 
mothers do leave a stamp on their children, You 
never know what that stamp will be; I think it's 
different with every child, but I see my mother's 
good stamp upon my brothers and sister. 


Just two weeks ago I saw her compassion and 
capacity for vigilant care in my oldest brother. 
He had a close friend who was dying of cancer. 
The month before she died he visited and cared 
for her daily, changing the dressing on an open 
wound in her neck that revealed her cords and 
muscles, He said to me, "I never thought I could 
do something like that, but when you love someone, 
I guess you find you can do a lot of things." He 
paused for several moments before he said, "I 
felt that it was an honor." Reflecting on his 
nurturing and his caring, I see that he is his 
mother's son, 


I could go on and on with stories both poignant 
and amusing, for my mother's life has been rich 
and widely varied, She has seen perhaps more 
than her share of grief; she has also seen her 
share of laughter, of music, of just plain fun. 
She has known her failed hopes, her self-re- 
proaches, and the countless host of earthly ills 
that beset us all. She has known the thrill and 
anguish of love--can anybody say what a mother 
suffers when her children suffer? 


Each mother should be viewed as a unique indi- 
vidual, infinitely precious in her wealth of 
accumulated experience. Perhaps some of you are 
thinking, "But I didn't--or don't--have a mother 
like yours who would come flying out of her house 
at 2:00 A.M. to watch over me through a restless 
night." That may be the case, but you had a 
mother. And we must learn to accept the reality 
that nobody in this mortal world--no parent, no 
child, no friend--can be to you everything that 
you need or want them to be. 


In the fine film Ordinary People, the teenaged 
son's psychiatrist asks the boy, "When are you 
going to forgive your mother?" The son responds, 
"For not loving me?" The doctor answers, "No 
kid, your mother loves you. For not loving you 
enough." In short, the doctor was saying, when 
are you going to accept her as a human being? 
For human beings have problems, limitations, 
fears, sorrows, and a thousand secrets in their 
souls. They may desperately wish to be more for 
a child, but remain unable. We all have wrongs 
to forgive; we all have wrongs for which to be 


forgiven. Let us prize our mothers not the less 
for that. Let us celebrate our mothers and their 
lives, Let us celebrate what our mothers have 


been to us, and even more importantly, let us 
celebrate what they are in and of themselves: 
unique individuals with a life tapestry that may 
be at once joyful, tumultuous, vibrant, confused, 
angry, noble, frightened, funny, suffering, seek- 
ing, loving, and finally--when all is said and 
done--mysterious, as wonderfully mysterious as 
life itself. 


Dian Saderup 
Provo, Utah 









EVANS 
BIOGRAPHY 
AWARD 


Authors of two books will share the $10,000 
prize in this year's David Woolley Evans and 
Beatrice Cannon Evans Biography Award, according 
to Dr. Ted J. Warner, Brigham Young University 
professor of history and executive secretary of 
the award committee, 


The winners announced at a BYU banquet are 
Richard L, Bushman for his work, Joseph Smith and 
the Beginnings of Mormoniem, published by the 
University of Illinois Press; and Linda King 
Newell and Valeen Tippetts Avery, co-authors of 
Mormon Enigma: Emma Hale Smith, Prophet's Wife, 
"Elect Lady," Polygamy's Foe, 1804-1879, published 
by Doubleday & Co, 


A $5,000 award was given for each book, 


Warner said the winners were chosen from a 
field of eleven entries, all biographies of sig- 
nificant persons in "the culture or history of 
what may be called Mormon country." 


This is the second year for the Evans award, 
which was established through a $200,000 grant 
from the late David Woolley Evans, founder of the 
national advertising and public relations firm 
David W. Evans, Inc, It is one of the largest 
literary awards of its type in the nation, 


Warner said the judges usually choose just one 
work but decided to split the award this year 
because of the "excellent quality" of the two 
books, 


Richard L, Bushman is 
a professor of history at 
the University of Delaware 
and has taught at Harvard, 
Brown, Boston and Brigham 
Young universities. 


The Salt Lake City 
native graduated magna 
cum laude from Harvard 
and subsequently took 
master's and doctoral 
degrees there. He has 
published widely in Mormon 
and non-Mormon journals 
and is winner of the 
Bancroft and Phi Alpha Theta prizes for literary 
works, 





Linda King Newell 
lives in Salt Lake and is 
a graduate of Utah State 
University. She, with 
her husband L, Jackson 
Newell, dean of Liberal 
Education at the Univer- 
sity of Utah, is co-editor 
of Dialogue: A Journal 
of Mormon Thought. 


She has published 
extensively and is winner 
of the Mormon History 
Association's T, Edgar 
Lyon Award for the best 
historical article published in 1981, "A Gift 
Given, A Gift Taken: Washing, Anointing, and 
Blessing the Sick Among Mormon Women," 





Valeen Tippetts Avery 
lives in Flagstaff, Ari- 
zona, and is an assistant 
professor of history and 
director of the Center 
for Colorado Plateau 
Studies at Northern Ari- 
zona University where she 
received her master's and 
doctoral degrees. 


She also has published 
extensively and is winner 
of the Reese Award for 
the best exposition in 
Mormon history, 1983. 





Last year's winner of the Evans award was 
Leonard J. Arrington for his work, Brigham Young: 
American Moses. Arrington is director of the 
Joseph Fielding Smith Institute of Church History 
at BYU and holds the Lemuel Hardison Redd Jr. 
Chair of Western History. 


antetes, 






Nt 








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Exponent II is published quarterly by 
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